On July 8th, 2025, Sage and Silas were found on Salisbury Road S near Hunt Road just south west of Richmond IN. It was obvious that Sage was very pregnant, but she was also extremely timid and shut down in addition to being quite young and infested with fleas. All of those things combined made Sage’s pregnancy very concerning.

Sage went to Animal Care Alliance where Dr. Kostiuk performed an XRay for us to determine how many babies there were and how soon she would have them.

The day they were found, Sage and Silas went to foster homes. Silas went with Conner and Bethany McClain, two of our board members, where he still lives today. Sage went to Jesse’s house for some much needed prenatal care. Sage immediately got a bath with dawn dish soap to get rid of the fleas so that she and her babies were less susceptible to complications. Jesse also scheduled Sage an appointment at Grove Veterinary Clinic so that she could be established as a patient incase there were any complications during labor.

Sage had her own labor and delivery suite at Jesse’s house. Sage ate all she wanted and decompressed a little bit but was still shut down. Jesse was checking her temperature every 12 hours to track labor symptoms. On July 10th, Sage didn’t eat as much and her temperature change indicated that she was within a 24 hour window of labor.

On the morning July 11th, Sage went to Grove Veterinary Clinic for her check up. Sage wasn’t too fond of walking on a leash, so she got to ride in a stroller. Dr. Johnston and Jesse agreed that Sage was pretty young, and her imaging showed some rather large babies. Because of that, they decided to go ahead with a C-Section so that there wasn’t an opportunity for labor complications.

Dr. Johnston delivered 7 healthy babies, 4 girls and 3 boys. Sage went back to Jesse’s house and Bethany arrived shortly after to help. Jesse and Bethany followed Dr. Johnston’s post-partum directions, allowing Sage to relax for an hour before allowing the puppies to nurse.

Sage refused to let the babies nurse and would try to mess with her incision. Luckily, Jesse had been preparing for the possibility that Sage would reject her puppies. Jesse and Bethany jumped into action bottle feeding the puppies. It took a lot of work and trying 5 different bottle brands but the babies finally got the hang of it.

Unfortunately, just 2 days after Sage’s C-section, Sage made a run for it. She squeezed through a tiny hole in a window next to where her air conditioning was. Sage was still so timid that she was loose for days with little sightings.

When Sage was finally found on July 17th, Jesse bought her a new cage that was special for anti anxiety and escape artists. Sage didn’t seem to mind the crate and acted like she hadn’t just disappeared in an extremely fragile state for 4 days.

After months of hard work and long nights, Sage and all her babies were adopted into loving forever homes.