This is the case when you can say: there would be no happiness, but misfortune helped. A mongrel puppy has fallen into a death trap. But the mother managed to help the baby.
It all started with the fact that the workers in the Yakut village left an uncovered pit with bitumen. Either they made the road, or they laid the roof – only a tiny puppy fell into a sticky trap. The baby was hardly more than two months old. If instinct could tell him how to swim, it certainly could not help him get out of the viscous slush. The baby was drowning and choking, a black film covered him from tail to ears.
Mom was there, but could not help the puppy. She couldn’t grab it with her teeth to pull it out, she couldn’t push it, and she couldn’t dive towards it. But she could call for help. And she rushed to the hard workers whom she noticed nearby. The dog whined and barked for attention. She twirled in place, as if making inviting gestures – it was quite clear that she was calling to follow her.
The men deciphered the dog gestures; they noticed that the animal was agitated, perhaps even frightened, that she needed help. And they hurried after the dog. What they saw was monstrous and beyond their heads: the puppy no longer even looked like a puppy. He looked like some kind of alien monster, black and slippery.
They snatched the baby out of the pit and immediately began to wash him in the nearest container of water – a makeshift trough for washing hands. The puppy breathed, he looked at them with desperate, frightened eyes. He was alive – the workers were on time. Right there, next to him, three more brothers and sisters were spinning, the same spotted and with ring tails as their mother.
The workers talked, and realized that they couldn’t just leave a creature that had just had their life saved in the street. The lucky one deserves a better fate, they decided. And they put the mother with the puppies in the car. Now the whole family lives in a shelter under the supervision of volunteers and is waiting to be taken to a new home.
