SASKATOON -- Quick thinking from December the dog saved her five new puppies from freezing after she led a farmer to their location.

“They’re doing really well,” said Brent Arstall with We All Need A Rescue (WANAR). “She was very cold, but she kept her puppies warm.”

The puppies are around two weeks old and they wouldn’t be alive today without their mother, Arstall said.

She showed up at the farmer’s doorstep, near the Battlefords, on Sunday cold and scratching on the door. The farmer tried to bring her to their heated garage, but she didn’t want to stay.

December then bolted away into the night and the farmer took off after her, being led right to a box filled with cold puppies.

"Obviously she didn’t carry the box out into the field and give birth inside this tiny little box and put a little blanket on them, that wasn’t her. It was done on purpose, somebody put her there."

WANAR was called and brought the family back to their rescue, and have been looking after them since.

"These people did the right thing, they followed that dog and didn’t go 'oh well she'll go back to her puppies.'"

The female puppies are named Joy, Love and Hope. The males are named Happy and Cheer.

"She's very underweight. She, at the time, wasn’t producing a lot of milk when she came, but now she is producing enough milk for them, and she's doing really well."

The puppies are in quarantine, the procedure for new dogs at WANAR, and after some vaccines and plenty of time with mom will be ready to be adopted.

WANAR says the process will take 10 to 12 weeks.