This story begins with an ending. Cassiopeia was a Labrador/chowchow mix with a curlicue tail and black spots on her tongue. My father found her and her sister, Annie, in a shoe box when they were just three weeks old. He nursed them back to health and gave them to me when they were seven months old. We shared the next decade and a half, and their lives embodied my entire adulthood. With the loss of Cassie, I lost a huge piece of myself, and I couldn't even begin to grieve.

So instead of grieving, I did something nuts. Something I had zero experience in: I fostered a pregnant mother dog. I had adopted a Classic Canine, Rocky, from Austin Animal Center when I lost Annie the year before, and I was fostering a heartworm-positive APA! senior named Arwen. But the loss of Cassie required something bigger. When I saw the e-mail requesting a foster for Ariel, a pregnant dog on death row in a South Texas shelter, I told APA! I'd do it, and Ariel began her trip to Austin.

A couple days later, I went to pick her up from the shelter. As I was leaving, I saw Charlotte hanging out on the sidewalk with a group of APA! employees and volunteers. She was a pregnant mother, too, only her foster had ghosted her. I stopped to say hello, and Charlotte immediately leaned into my leg and made the most amazing eye contact. A few moments later, my car was loaded with two pregnant moms.

Unlike Charlotte, Ariel was timid, scared, and all ribs. Except for bathroom breaks, she stayed in her crate, staring at the wall. I tried to let her know she was safe, our relationship was on her terms, and my touches would only be gentle. I wooed her with steak, and eventually she became confident enough to join the family for thirty minutes or so before running back to her crate.

Four days after bringing the girls home, Charlotte gave birth to ten beautiful, healthy puppies. But on Friday afternoon, two days later, I came home to a cold, inactive, but alive puppy in Ariel's crate. I tried everything I could to get this puppy to nurse or bottle-feed, and I tried to warm it on a heating pad, but after a couple of hours it began struggling to breathe. I rushed it to the shelter's clinic, where it died later that evening.

My husband stayed with Ariel while I took the first puppy, and when I returned, I found him in her room, holding a stillborn puppy. We rushed Ariel and the deceased puppy back to the clinic, where she gave birth to another stillborn. The vets decided to let nature run its course and sent us home knowing this night, which should have been miraculous, would instead be horrific. I stayed with Ariel all night, and although she kept frantically searching for the stillborn puppies I kept taking away, she somehow learned to trust me. I held her in my arms between births, and we took catnaps.

Finally, puppies number six and seven were born, weak but alive. We rushed them to the clinic, where they were tube-fed and kept in a heated oxygen tank. We returned home around 8:00 a.m., thinking our night of pain was over. But more puppies had been hiding from the sonogram, and we were surprised by three more stillbirths, for a total of ten puppies. After the last, Mama collapsed, and I could not wake her, so we rushed to the vet yet again.

She received meds and fluids for a high fever and pneumonia, and we were given her two surviving puppies. All night long, Ariel and I would snuggle on the couch, waking up every three hours so I could tube-feed them and she could clean them before putting them back to bed in their heating-pad-lined Tupperware. Around 9:00 a.m., the girl we had named Fawn died in my arms. I gave her mouth-to-mouth, and she revived, but she died a second time on the way to the clinic and couldn’t be revived. I've never cried so hard in my life. We had fought so hard and so long with so little sleep.

What we gained, though, were Ariel's trust and love and the life of her one surviving puppy (now named Squirrel in his forever home). Ariel couldn't sleep without me. She followed me everywhere and tried to get out the front window when I'd leave the house. Gradually, she healed—physically and emotionally. But how could I ever let her go after all she had been through? I adopted her and her new sister, Charlotte.

Both girls came to us neglected and fragile, but we are giving them a different view on life, and they are giving us joy and love in return as we watch them grow, learn, and explore. We are family, and our experiences have strengthened our bonds beyond any possible breakage. I couldn't imagine a world without them.