When 3-day-old Penny needed to be nursed, they turned to her foster brother Kilo to get the job done. Yes… we said brother.

Candice Miller loves her rescue dogs. She lives on a farm in Marcola, OR with six of them.
So, she knew she had to step in when she got a call that Penny refused to nurse.

“My great aunt gave me a call and let me know that someone she knew had bread her dog too early,” she told The Dodo. “What happens then, of course, is that there’s no maternal instinct.”

Candice’s reaction was to immediately pick the newborn puppy up from her great aunt. She had an idea and had the perfect person in mind to test it out on.

So, she turned to one of her male rescues, Kilo, to see if she could get Penny to nurse from Kilo.

“He’s real nuturing, so he laid down and I put the bottle on Kilo’s belly. So she [Penny] was able to push on him and then finally she would eagerly drink from the bottle,” Candice explained.

Penny eventually started to grow stronger thanks to Candice’s 24-hour care.

“You have to burp puppies that are bottle-fed,” she said. “We had to keep her on a heating pad in a really warm area, cuddled up with Moo and Kilo. And so, our dogs helped. We all got to see her eyes open for the first time and her start to walk.”

When Penny got too old for heating pads, she started to wear pajamas to keep warm in the winter.

“Once she started learning how to play, her and Moo were nonstop,” Candice explained.

Penny was strong and healthy and was old enough to be put up for adoption, but Candice just couldn’t go through with it.

There was no way she was going to give up “her baby” at this point.

“It was really like giving up my baby,” said. “Cause I cried every day. I cried every time I thought about it. I had no intention of keeping her, but I couldn’t let her go. So so she stayed.”

Penny joined the rest of Candice’s pack and couldn’t be happier in her new forever home with the dogs who helped raise her from just a few days old.

Watch Penny’s inspiring story below.

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