Aug 21, 2008, 19:09 GMT
Buenos Aires - A female dog found an abandoned newborn baby girl early Thursday and took the child home with her puppies in a poor suburb of the Argentine city of La Plata, local media reported citing police sources.
The owner of the dog reportedly noticed the baby hours later, when he heard her cry. The man immediately called the police, and the newborn was taken to a hospital in La Plata.
The dog, called China, reportedly found the baby in a barren lot in the neighbourhood of Abasto. Guided by her instinct, she took the girl with her puppies and kept her warm in the Argentine winter.
The baby, weighing some 4 kilogrammes, was naked and showed some bruising, said authorities at the Melchor Romero hospital, where the girl was brought before being transferred to the Children's Hospital. Doctors said she had been born only a few hours earlier.
Thursday morning, after the case was made public, a 14-year-old girl arrived at the hospital accompanied by a neighbour and said she was the baby's mother. Medical authorities said she admitted to having abandoned the baby.
The teenager reportedly said she gave birth late Wednesday, alone and in a very precarious setting, and then decided not to keep her baby.
Your Talkback on this Story