A Canadian man had to cut his hunting trip short on Friday after stumbling upon 20 puppies abandoned in a field.
Greg Zubiak, a hunter, was looking for a moose in a field near Glaslyn in Canada's Saskatchewan province when he saw the defenseless pups with no mother or owner in sight.
"As I walked up, they all just kind of looked at me and I guess my moose hunt was over," Zubiak told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "I just said, 'OK, come on,' and as soon as I said that, they all came running to me."
The black, white and brown bundles of joy range in ages from 3 to 6 weeks. The only thing they were apparently left with was a single blanket. Zubiak sprang into action, making a makeshift bed for the cold pups in his truck.
"I just took off what I was wearing when I was hunting, like all my hunting stuff, and made them kind of a little place in the front of the box of the truck," Zubiak told CBC News. "They're too small to jump out so I made a little bed for them."
The hunter drove the orphaned dogs to the Battlefords Humane Society where a veterinarian learned they were starving and ridden with fleas and worms. The youngest is especially weak and will need to be fed through a bottle. Other than that, the puppies are expected to live, Michelle Spark, coordinator at Battlefords Humane Society, told CBC News.
Their focus now is nursing the dogs back to health so they are ready for adoption.
It's unclear who abandoned the puppies or why. Zubiak said he is just glad he found them when he did.
"It had to have been that day," Zubiak said. "Because there are so many coyotes in that area that they wouldn't have made it overnight."
