“We were very surprised …”

This sweet stray dog and her two puppies are now safe and sound at the Beylikduzu Alfa Veterinary Clinic in Istanbul, Turkey — but the story of how they came to be there is touching hearts around the world.

It’s all thanks to a mother’s love.

Earlier this week, a Good Samaritan arrived to the clinic with a sickly puppy she’d found on the street. Staff immediately began to nurse the little dog back to health, not knowing at the time that this wouldn’t be their only patient that day.

A short while later, a new figure appeared at the clinic’s front door — it was the puppy’s mother.

She’d come carrying another puppy in need of help.

Here’s that moment on video:

“We were very surprised when we saw the dog,” veterinarian Baturay Oğan told The Dodo. “We thought [the puppy] was dead at first, but when we examined him, we realized that his heart was beating very slowly.”

Staff at the clinic began treating this puppy, too, allowing his worried mother to remain by his side.

Oğan believes that the dog had given birth weeks earlier but was separated from them by someone who took her to get spayed. Without their mother’s warmth, the puppies had become hypothermic.

Realizing this, the mother dog followed the Good Samaritan with her first puppy to get help for the other.

Sadly, the mother dog arrived later with a third puppy who could not be saved. But her dedication to her babies was far from in vain.

Never again, says Oğan, will they have to face the world alone.