Part 2: Mama Dog Lost All Six Of Her Newborn Puppies In A Highway Accident In Rural Georgia. She Stopped Eating For Five Days. Then A Volunteer At Our Shelter Walked In With A Cardboard Box. What She Found Inside Made Her Lay Down On The Concrete Floor And Cry.

I’m going to tell this slow. The slow part is the whole story.

Brenna Cho-Whitlock walked into our front office at 2:34 p.m. on Saturday, April 27th, 2024. She set the cardboard box on our intake counter very carefully. She kept one hand on the lid.

I want to tell you what Brenna looked like, because she is one of the heroes of this story.

She was 26 years old. She was a vet tech at a small clinic called Gainesville Animal Hospital about an hour south of us. She had been a vet tech for four years. She had a small diamond stud nose piercing and her dark hair was pulled back in a messy bun. She was wearing scrubs with little cartoon turtles on them. She was nervous.

She said, “Ma’am. I’m sorry. I know I should have called. I just — I had to come.”

I said, “Brenna. Tell me what’s in the box.”

She said, “Ma’am — about three hours ago somebody dumped these on the side of Highway 129 outside Gainesville. A guy walking his dog found them and brought them to my clinic. They are puppies. Four of them. They are maybe 10 to 14 days old. They don’t have a mother. They were in a cardboard box on the gravel shoulder. The guy said the box was sealed with packing tape. He cut it open. He said one of them was crying and the others were almost too cold to move.“

She paused.

She said, “Ma’am. They need a mama dog. They need her in the next twenty-four hours or they are going to die from cold and from inability to bottle-feed. We tried at the clinic. They are not taking the bottle well. They are too young. My vet — Dr. Wendell Olufsen — told me he had heard through a rescue network that you had a Boxer mama who lost her babies. He told me to drive up here and ask if she would take them. He said — Ma’am — he said it was a longshot. He said she might attack them. He said she might not even look at them. He said it was the only option these four had.”

I want to tell you what I did in the next thirty seconds.

I asked Brenna to lift the lid of the box.

She did.

Inside the box, on a small folded fleece blanket, were four newborn puppies. They were maybe 10 to 14 days old. Their eyes were just barely starting to open. Two were solid black. One was black with white markings. One was a small brindle-and-white that looked almost identical to a Boxer mix. The brindle puppy was the smallest of the four — clearly the runt — and was pressed against the side of the box for warmth.

Two of them were crying.

I called Dr. Reginald Akinwole-Park from the front office. He was in the back doing rounds. I said, “Reggie. Get out here. We have an idea and I need your medical opinion.”

He came out. He looked at the puppies. He looked at me. He looked at Brenna.

He said, “Wynona. Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

I said, “Reggie. Yes.”

He said, “It might not work. It is unusual but documented in working-line dogs. Cross-fostering newborns to a mama dog who has lost her own litter sometimes works if the timing is right. Her milk has not fully dried up yet. The babies are about the same age as her babies were. The smell will be unfamiliar but the maternal drive — if it is intact — can override.”

He paused.

He said, “Wynona. I want to tell you what could go wrong. She could reject them. That would be the most common outcome. She could attack them. That would be the worst outcome. She could ignore them and they would die in her kennel from cold while we watch. We would have to be there to intervene. We would need to do this together and we would need to be ready to pull the puppies out at the first sign of rejection. It needs to happen in her kennel. On her terms. With us standing right there.”

I said, “Reggie. Now.”

He said, “Now.”

I carried the cardboard box back to June’s kennel.

Brenna came with me. Dr. Akinwole-Park came with me. Our weekend kennel tech — a 33-year-old woman named Olamide Trinidad-Roosevelt who has been with our shelter for six years — came with me.

We stood outside June’s kennel. The kennel door was solid metal at the bottom and chain-link at the top, with a small viewing window cut into the metal at human eye height. I looked through the window. June was on her bed. Facing the wall. She had not moved in about three hours since my morning visit.

I unlocked the kennel.

I walked in slowly. I set the cardboard box down on the concrete floor about six feet from where June was lying. I did not approach her. I did not call her name.

Dr. Akinwole-Park stayed in the doorway with the kennel door open, ready to grab the puppies if anything went wrong.

Brenna stayed in the hallway with her hand over her mouth.

Olamide stayed beside Dr. Akinwole-Park with a clean blanket in her hands.

I lifted the lid of the box.

I want to tell you what happened in the next 47 seconds, because the next 47 seconds will live in my brain until I die.

For the first 8 seconds, nothing happened.

The puppies in the box did not know what to do. They could not see well yet. They could smell — they could smell the kennel, they could smell concrete, they could smell us — but they had not yet caught the smell of a mama dog because June was facing the wall and the air in the kennel was still.

Then one of the puppies — the small brindle runt — let out a small high-pitched cry. A nursing cry. A where is my mother cry.

June’s ear moved.

I want to tell you what I mean by that. The ear that had been flopped down against the side of her face turned toward the box. The tip lifted. She did not move her head. She did not turn her body. She just lifted the tip of her left ear in the direction of the cry.

The brindle puppy cried again.

Another puppy joined in. Then a third.

June moved her head.

She moved it very slowly. About one inch. Her nose came up off the floor. She did not yet turn toward the box. Her nose lifted into the air and her nostrils flared.

She was scenting them.

She held that position for maybe twelve seconds. Her nostrils were working. Her brow was furrowed. You could see her trying to understand what she was smelling.

Then she stood up.

She had not stood up on her own in five days. She had stood for the IV fluids. She had been helped up by Olamide twice a day for short walks to the bathroom area. But she had not — on her own initiative — stood up in 120 hours.

She stood up.

She walked the six feet across the concrete floor toward the cardboard box. Her left front leg — the one with the fractured scapula — was stiff. She walked with a slight limp. Her ears were forward. Her nose was extended toward the box.

She reached the box.

She lowered her head over the edge of the box.

She looked down at the four puppies.

Dr. Akinwole-Park was holding his breath. I was holding mine. Brenna had tears coming down her face. Olamide had moved one step closer in case we needed to intervene.

June did not growl. She did not bare her teeth. She did not stiffen.

She lowered her muzzle very gently into the box and she licked the brindle runt on the top of his head.

I made a sound. I think I made a small sound. I don’t remember.

She licked him again. Then she moved her muzzle to the puppy next to him — the black-and-white one — and she licked his head. She licked all four of them in turn. Slow. Careful. The way a mother dog licks her own newborns.

Then she did something none of us had been expecting.

She climbed into the cardboard box.

A sixty-two-pound Boxer mix climbed her front legs over the side of a cardboard box meant for four newborn puppies. She was way too big for the box. She compressed her body. She lay down on her left side inside the box, with the four puppies pressed against the curve of her belly.

She exposed her teats.

The puppies did not know what to do at first. They had been bottle-fed. They had not nursed from a mama. But within about ninety seconds, the brindle runt found a teat. He latched on. He started nursing.

The other three figured it out within the next four minutes.

Dr. Akinwole-Park said, very softly from the doorway, “Oh my god.”

Brenna sat down on the floor of the hallway outside the kennel and started crying so hard she could not stand up.

Olamide put her hand over her mouth.

I sat down on the concrete floor of the kennel about four feet from June and her new four puppies, and I put my face in my hands, and I cried in a way I have not cried in eighteen years of doing this job.

I want to tell you about the rest of that afternoon.

The puppies nursed for about 22 minutes the first time. June lay on her side in the cardboard box and let them. She did not look at me. She closed her eyes. She thumped her tail very slowly against the side of the box. Once. Twice. Three times. The slow deliberate thump of a dog who has just been given back something she did not know she could still have.

After the puppies finished nursing, they fell asleep against her belly.

I want to tell you what June did next, because this is the moment that made Dr. Akinwole-Park cry. He has been a vet for 21 years. He had not cried in front of staff in the four years I had worked with him.

He cried in the doorway of that kennel at 3:21 p.m. on April 27th, 2024.

What June did was this. She got up — very carefully — from the cardboard box. The puppies stayed asleep on the blanket. She walked across the kennel to her food bowl. The food bowl had been full for five days.

She lowered her head.

She ate.

She ate slowly. Carefully. Like a dog who had forgotten how. She ate about a third of the bowl. Then she walked to the water bowl. She drank for almost a minute straight.

Then she walked back to the cardboard box.

She climbed back in.

She lay down on her side with the four sleeping puppies against her belly.

She closed her eyes.

She let out a long sigh.

She thumped her tail. Twice.

She slept.

Brenna stayed for another two hours that afternoon, sitting on the floor of the hallway outside June’s kennel, watching through the window. She had to leave around 5:30 p.m. for her shift the next morning.

Before she left, she came back into my office. She had cried so much her mascara was completely smeared. She had a small notepad in her hand. She had written something down.

She said, “Ma’am. I want to volunteer. I want to drive up every Saturday and Sunday until those puppies are weaned. I will not get in your staff’s way. I will do whatever you tell me to do. Please. I have to be part of this.”

I said, “Brenna. Yes.”

She drove up every weekend for the next eight weeks. Two and a half hours of driving each way every weekend. She slept on a small cot we set up in our staff room. She brought groceries for the staff. She helped with bottle supplementation when needed. She cleaned kennels. She did intake paperwork. She became one of us.

I want to tell you about the eight weeks.

June nursed those four puppies for the next six weeks. The puppies all survived. They thrived. The brindle runt — the one who had cried first, the one she had licked first — was the smallest until week 4, then caught up to his siblings. He turned out to be a feisty little dog who, by week 6, was knocking down his bigger siblings to get to the food bowl first.

We named the puppies:

— Henley (the brindle runt; named after the Henley dirt road where Brenna’s clinic gets its dirt-road mail)

— Tovi (one of the black ones; named for a beloved tech at the Gainesville clinic who had recently lost her father)

— Mosi (the other black one; Swahili for firstborn)

— Ferndale (the black-and-white one; named after the county park outside Dahlonega where we walk the shelter dogs)

The four of them grew up together. They started solid food at week 4. They started walking around the kennel at week 5. By week 6 they were running. By week 7 they were trying to climb out of the cardboard box — which we had replaced three times by then with larger boxes as they grew — and June had started lying down outside the box to let them play on the kennel floor.

June started gaining weight. Not from the food — well, partly from the food — but the kind of weight gain you see in a creature whose body has remembered that it has a purpose. Her coat got shinier. Her eyes got clearer. She started wagging her tail when staff approached the kennel. She started barking on day 23 — a single excited bark when Olamide came in with her morning food. That was the first sound she had made since April 22nd.

Olamide cried.

By week 8 — June 22nd, 2024, exactly two months after the day June had come in — Dr. Akinwole-Park declared the puppies ready for adoption.

We posted them on our website on the morning of June 22nd.

By 2 p.m. that afternoon we had 47 adoption applications.

By the end of the next day we had 198.

The story had spread.

I want to tell you about the documentary.

A regional public-radio reporter named Cyril Adesina had heard the story through a rescue network. He drove up from Atlanta on May 18th, 2024 — about three weeks after Brenna had brought the puppies — and spent two days at our shelter doing interviews.

His piece aired on WABE Atlanta on June 1st as a 9-minute radio feature called The Mother Of June.

The piece was beautiful. It made me cry. It made Dr. Akinwole-Park cry. It made Brenna cry. It used audio of the puppies crying in the cardboard box that Brenna had recorded on her phone the day she brought them in. It used Cyril’s interview with Mr. Drumm Costello — the backyard breeder — who, after hearing about June’s story, called Cyril unsolicited to apologize on the record. He said, “I should not have been transporting them like that. I lost them because I was careless. I do not deserve forgiveness. I am going to spend the rest of my life not breeding dogs.”

The radio piece was picked up by national NPR shows. It was reposted, with permission, on social media.

A 24-year-old documentary filmmaker named Persephone Whitaker-Vaughn in Brooklyn heard the radio piece. She emailed me on June 8th asking if she could come down with a small camera crew and make a video version.

She came down June 14th through June 16th. She filmed June with the puppies. She filmed me. She filmed Brenna driving up from Gainesville for the weekend. She filmed Dr. Akinwole-Park. She filmed an interview with Mr. Costello at his small house outside Dahlonega.

Persephone’s 14-minute mini-documentary, The Mother Of June, went up on YouTube on August 11th, 2024.

It hit 1 million views in 36 hours.

It hit 10 million views in two weeks.

As of November 2025, when I am writing this, it has 23 million views.

The documentary made our small shelter — operating budget of approximately $340,000 a year, mostly funded by county contributions and small individual donations — into a national name. We received $1.7 million in donations in the six months after the documentary aired. We have used that money to:

— Build a new neonatal care wing at our shelter, completed in March of 2025. The wing has six dedicated kennels with climate control, hospital-grade flooring, and dedicated bottle-feeding equipment. It is named the June Wing.

— Hire two new full-time staff members, including Brenna Cho-Whitlock as our new Neonatal Care Coordinator as of January 2025. She moved to Dahlonega for the job.

— Endow a small scholarship for North Georgia community-college students pursuing veterinary tech certifications. Three students have received the June Scholarship so far.

— Donate to the regional rescue network that originally connected Brenna’s clinic to our shelter, so that other cross-fostering opportunities can be coordinated faster.

I want to tell you what happened to June and the four puppies after the adoption process.

The four puppies were adopted out by July of 2024. All four to families who lived within an hour’s drive of the shelter, so we could maintain contact with them.

Henley — the brindle runt who cried first — was adopted by a young couple in Dahlonega named Cordelius and Saffron Akiyama-Pope. They are a 28-year-old high-school music teacher and a 30-year-old graphic designer. They had been on our adoption waiting list for almost two years. Henley is now 19 months old. He weighs 48 pounds. He is the loudest most enthusiastic dog I have ever known. He still cries when he is excited — high-pitched yips that sound exactly like the way he cried in the cardboard box.

Tovi was adopted by Lavinia Cho-Whitlock-Salazar, the tech at the Gainesville clinic for whom he was named — the one who had recently lost her father. She drove up to meet him in May of 2024 and burst into tears when she saw him. Tovi is now 19 months old. He weighs 55 pounds. He sleeps on top of Lavinia every night. She told me, when she came up for our six-month follow-up visit, that she had not known how to keep living after her father died, and that Tovi had become the reason she got out of bed in the morning. She cried in my office for about ten minutes.

Mosi was adopted by an 86-year-old widow named Mrs. Gemella Pritchard-Fontaine who lives in a small Craftsman house in Dahlonega. She had lost her husband in 2022 and her previous dog in 2023. Her daughter, who lives in Atlanta, had been searching for a small calm dog for her mother. Mosi was the calmest of the four puppies. Mrs. Pritchard-Fontaine adopted him on July 1st, 2024. He is now 19 months old. He sleeps on her bed every night. She has told me, on each of our follow-up visits, that he saved her life.

Ferndale was adopted by a family of five — two parents and three kids ages 7, 9, and 12 — who lived in Cleveland, Georgia, about 25 minutes from our shelter. The family had specifically asked for the rowdiest puppy of the litter, because they had three kids who wanted to run. Ferndale was the rowdiest. He is now 19 months old. He weighs 62 pounds. He goes to the elementary school every afternoon to walk home with the youngest kid.

I want to tell you what happened to June.

June was adopted by Demetrius and Wynona Hawthorne-Pell.

That is me.

I had not been planning to adopt her. I had not adopted a dog from this shelter in 18 years. I have always believed that the shelter director should be a neutral party — that adopting a dog would create the appearance of favoritism or distraction. I have maintained that policy strictly.

I broke it for June.

On the morning of June 24th, 2024, two days after we had posted the puppies for adoption, I walked into June’s kennel for our usual morning visit. She was lying on her bed with the four puppies asleep on top of her. She had become so used to me by then that she lifted her head and thumped her tail when I came in.

She had let me bring her treats. She had let me pet her. She had not, until that morning, ever stood up and walked over to me when I came in.

That morning she did.

She stood up — gently, so as not to wake the puppies — and she walked across the kennel to where I was standing.

She put her head against my hip.

She pressed her head against me and she let out a small sigh.

I want to tell you what I did. I want to be honest about it.

I went to my office. I closed the door. I called my husband Demetrius at the post office. He had been working the morning shift. He picked up the phone.

I said, “Demetrius. I have to ask you something.”

He said, “Wynona. What is it. Are you okay?”

I said, “Demetrius. I want to bring June home with us when the puppies are adopted. I know it breaks my own policy. I know I have always said I would not do this. I — I cannot let her go to anyone else. Demetrius. I am asking.”

He was quiet for a moment.

He said, “Wynona. I have been waiting for you to ask me this question for eighteen years. Bring her home. I will be there to help you with the paperwork tonight.”

I cried at my desk for fifteen minutes after I hung up.

We brought June home on July 14th, 2024, the day after Ferndale — the last of the puppies — went home to his new family.

She was 3 years old. Sixty-eight pounds (she had gained weight). Brindle and white with a black mask and one floppy left ear. She had a small healed scar on her left scapula from her fracture. She had a small bare patch on her belly where the fur had not fully grown back from where the four puppies had nursed her.

She slept on the foot of our bed the first night.

She has slept there every single night since.

I want to write down a few things before I finish.

The first thing. Brenna Cho-Whitlock — the 26-year-old vet tech who drove an hour with a cardboard box — moved to Dahlonega in December of 2024 to take her full-time position as our Neonatal Care Coordinator. She has, in 11 months in the role, coordinated 14 cross-fostering placements at our shelter. All 14 have succeeded. She has trained five other shelters in our region on the cross-fostering protocols. She has spoken at three regional animal-welfare conferences. She is 27 now. She is engaged to be married next spring to a 29-year-old organic farmer named Kestrel Rodriguez-Bauer who delivers vegetables to our shelter every Friday. June, the dog, will be in the wedding.

The second thing. Mr. Drumm Costello — the backyard breeder who surrendered June — has not bred dogs since April 22nd, 2024. He has been one of our small monthly donors since June of 2024 ($25 a month, every month, unbroken). He came to our shelter for the first time in person in October of 2024 — six months after he had surrendered June — to volunteer at our fall fundraiser. He sat next to me at the registration table. He said, in his quiet Georgia accent, “Ma’am. I want you to know I think about her every day. I am not the same person who drove her in last April.” I told him I knew. I gave him a name tag. He volunteered for six hours. He has volunteered at every fundraiser since.

The third thing. Dr. Reginald Akinwole-Park has been writing a small academic paper about June’s case for a veterinary medical journal. The paper will be his first publication in 21 years of practice. It is titled Cross-fostering as Therapeutic Intervention for Grief-Related Hyporexia in Recently Whelped Canines. The paper has been peer-reviewed and is scheduled for publication in The Journal of Veterinary Behavior in early 2026. Reggie has asked me to be a co-author for the case-history section. I said yes. At 56 years old, I am about to be a published academic for the first time in my life.

The fourth thing. The four puppies — Henley, Tovi, Mosi, and Ferndale — and their adoptive families come back to the shelter every April 22nd for what we have started calling “June Day.” It is a small reunion. We bring all five dogs together in our back exercise yard. They recognize each other. They run and play. They have been doing this for two Aprils now. The third one is coming up in five months. I am already planning the food.

I want to end with one more thing.

About a week after we adopted June, I came home from a long day at the shelter to find my husband Demetrius sitting on the back porch of our small house outside Dahlonega. He had a beer in his hand and June at his feet. The sun was setting over the mountains. He had been at the post office until 6 p.m.

I sat down next to him on the porch.

He said, “Wynona. I want to ask you something.”

I said, “What.”

He said, “You and me, we tried for kids for years. We did the doctors. We did the treatments. It didn’t work out. We made our peace with it about twenty years ago. Right?”

I said, “Right.”

He said, “Wynona. I want to tell you. I was sitting out here tonight thinking about it. I think we were waiting. The whole time. I think we were waiting for a dog who knew what it was like to lose her babies and to take in babies that weren’t hers. I think we have been her family for a week and I have not felt this — full — in a very long time. I just wanted to tell you that.”

He took a sip of his beer.

He said, “That’s all. I love you, Wynona. Thank you for breaking your rule.”

I leaned against him on the porch. June leaned against both of us.

The sun went down over the north Georgia mountains.

I have not cried at the kitchen table about not having children since that night. I had been crying about it, quietly, by myself, on and off, for twenty years. I have not since.

I have a 3-year-old Boxer mix named June who sleeps on the foot of our bed and who licks my hand every morning when I wake up and who, when I open the back door, runs out into our small fenced yard and rolls in the grass exactly the way I imagine a 3-year-old child might roll in the grass on a Saturday morning.

I have a husband who waited 18 years for me to ask the right question and who said yes the second I asked it.

I have a 27-year-old former vet tech turned coordinator turned soon-to-be-married friend who drives me to the doctor when my back acts up and who has become one of the closest people in my life.

I have a 21-year veterinarian who is finally going to be published.

I have 4,400 animals’ worth of memories.

I have one specific Saturday afternoon — April 27th, 2024, at approximately 3:21 p.m. — when a 62-pound Boxer mix walked across her kennel and climbed into a cardboard box and licked four newborn puppies on the head and lay down and let them nurse.

That is the moment I will think about on the day I die.

If you have a dog in your life, please tell them you love them tonight.

If you don’t have a dog in your life, please consider that there are 4,400 of them at small shelters like ours waiting to meet you. Some of them have lost their babies. Some of them are looking for babies. Some of them are looking for you.

You do not always know who has been waiting for you until you walk into the shelter.

June was waiting for me.

I just didn’t know.

If this story moved you, follow the page — there are more like June and Brenna and Reggie and Demetrius I haven’t told yet.