Animal Rescue Volunteers Seek Shelter From Ice At Gas Station With Dog, Newborn Puppies

Two volunteers with Puppy Haven Rescue picked up a momma dog and her puppies in Chandler and planned to bring them right back to Tulsa.

Instead, the volunteers ran into some wintry weather, and they needed a place to take shelter.

The employees at a Love's in Chandler opened their doors to the rescuers and the dogs.

The volunteers had been at the Chandler animal hospital less than an hour before the freezing rain started to fall. They only made it five miles before pulling into a Love's gas station to get gas and make a game plan, and that plan turned into an overnight stay.

The mama and her puppies ended up all snuggled on blankets inside the Love's after what should've been a typical rescue turned into something extraordinary.

"Across the board, it was the craziest rescue I think we've ever had and yes, miraculous," Diana Dacyczyn, Puppy Haven Rescue's volunteer coordinator, said.

Diana Dacyczyn and Amanda Kelly say the mama dog had complications while giving birth to her fourth puppy.

"Having a puppy that was stuck, having to do CPR, having to put her in the back of the car in the middle of the ice storm, finding out that one of the babies has a cleft palate," Amanda Kelly, facilities manager with Puppy Haven Rescue said.

On top of all of that, the freezing rain made driving too dangerous.

"We're in an area we don't know, in the middle of the night with a storm we know is not going to be short, and we're stuck in basically a ditch," said Dacyczn.

They finally made it to the Love's and realized they weren't going to go anywhere in the icy conditions.

"We look to the turnpike, and we watched a semi jack knife; the trailer went completely sideways,” Dacyczyn said. “He’s in the grass. We kind of looked at each other, and we're like, no, nope. We're not going to make that trip tonight."

Their only option was to ask the employees to stay the night inside with a dog and her four puppies.

"I don't think they would have made it,” Kelly said. “We wouldn't have been able to keep them warm long enough in the back of a jeep after just having puppies. I mean, it's hard enough on a mom. Then, to be stuck in that. For them to give her a safe place to be warm, she was very comfortable, and to check on her--very lifesaving."

Amanda and Diana were so grateful to the folks at Love's that they named the mama dog Lovie.

Lovie is at the vet, and her puppies are with foster families. They'll be reunited on Tuesday.