In this video I’m telling you the story of how I ended up with 13 dogs (including little Moss) — and it starts with a very pregnant mama dog named Daffodil at my Humane Society volunteer shift. She was surrendered malnourished, underweight, with fractured teeth, and clearly under massive stress. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and when I went back and she was suddenly “gone,” I panicked. Finding out she was just moved to another part of the shelter made my heart sink, because a shelter is no place to be giving birth — the stress and communicable disease risk is real. So I reached out to the foster coordinator and picked her up the next day. I’d never taken a dog through birth before, so I got the basics from the vet team and focused on making her feel safe, loved, and fed because her body condition put both her and the puppies at higher risk. Then the truly crazy part: Daffodil whelped nine puppies in five hours. Watching her contractions literally take her breath away was terrifying, emotional, and life-changing — and it’s going to shape everything I share going forward, from rescue and foster to force-free training, puppy potty/crate basics, and helping more dogs stay out of shelters.