Are we sure the dog didn’t already have the puppies in the hole?
I had a beagle that dug her way under an old immovable piece of farm equipment and had puppies. We didn’t see the pups till they started coming out by themselves.
That was my thought as well.
However, it is commendable that she did not abandon them as fire passed over.
Somewhere, there is a photo of a burned bird on a nest with her live babies safely beneath her.
That’s a good point; I find it hard to believe she wouldn’t have opted for flight first.
I remember reading about the Mann Gulch fire out west decades ago, where smokejumpers were basically caught by the fire. A veteran survived when, instead of trying to reach some rocks up the hill from them, he immediately lit a fire in the dry grass in front of him. As the fire reached him, he lay down in the charred area and survived with some singed hair. About a dozen of them were killed trying to reach the top of the hill; a couple of young ones survived by reaching it (and having the presence of mind to drop their equipment to do so).
Good point.
One of my past adoptees had her pups in a hole she dug in the “untamed” part of my property.