Rita the baby goat was rejected and a.b.a.n.d.o.n.e.d by her mother at the moment of her birth. However, Blizzie the dog intervened to take care of her.
Now she feeds her together with her four pups; just like one more of the family, without any differences.
Eighteen-year-old farmer Glori Rushing told Metro UK that the moment Rita’s mother, Smore, refused to feed her, Blizzie took over: she jumped into the pen and took her to bed with her own babies, whom she had given birth to a few days earlier.
The three-year-old dog and four-week-old Rita formed a beautiful bond.
“Blizzie recently had a litter of puppies and her pen has a fence about six feet long. She climbed over it and went to pick up Rita and put her with her own puppies,” she added.
As Blizzie instinctively took care of Rita, Gloria decided to let them stay together. “She was doing an amazing job,” she said. She had enough milk to feed them all.
Glori and her husband Nathaniel tried to feed her with a bottle, but she preferred her foster mother’s milk. At first they tried to reunite Rita with her own mother, but when she continued to reject her, they allowed Blizzie to adopt her.
“Blizzie’s supposed to help take care of the farm and the goats, but I’ve never seen her take one like this before. I was giving Rita a bottle every two hours because I didn’t know how good dog milk would be for a goat, but instead she just went to Blizzie.
Rita and the other puppies get along so well and she is very good with them, but she has these long, big paws. She acts like she’s one of the puppies,” she said.