Three little puppies were rescued from the streets in the United States when they lost their mother. The babies were only a week old and needed sensitive care and love. They were rushed to the Helping Hands Humane Society shelter. There, the puppies ended up in good hands.

The puppies were named Rocky, Chip, and Brownie. They quickly found a holding facility for them and began hourly bottle feeding. They recovered quickly and grew up healthy.
When the pups were brought to the shelter, they looked almost identical – but as they grew, the fosters noticed that the pups were very different. They began noticing this when the babies were 6 or 7 weeks old. A little later, it became clear that the puppies’ appearance would be drastically different – they had different hair lengths, coat, and ears.

“Looking back at the pictures now, we started to see differences when the boys were about 3 weeks old,” Emi Griess, the communications coordinator at HHHS Topeka, told The Dodo. “Brownie’s coat was longer and silkier, Rocky’s was coarser and Chip still looked like a baby Chihuahua. Right around 6 to 7 weeks of age, we could easily tell that all three of them were going to look very, very different from one another.”

They quickly found owners for the puppies, each taken by colleagues and acquaintances of their foster mom. Before that, they decided to run a DNA test. It turned out that the puppies were born in the same litter. They had genes from a Chihuahua, a Yorkshire Terrier, and a Pomeranian Spitz.

“I was SO shocked,” Grace Clinton, director of business development and special events at HHHS Topeka, told The Dodo. “I couldn’t believe they were from the same litter. I’d never seen something like that before.”

Now the pups live happily in loving families and even see each other occasionally for walks. Despite their different appearance, there is a very strong bond between them.

“The boys’ foster mom works for Hill’s Pet Nutrition and always had one or more of the puppies with her during virtual meetings,” Griess said. “They quickly became quite popular meeting guests, and Chippie and Brownie were both adopted by Hill’s coworkers! Rocky was adopted by a previous Hill’s employee, so the boys are able to get back together occasionally.”