Stray dog rescues abandoned baby

NAIROBI, Kenya — A newborn girl abandoned in a Kenyan forest was saved by a stray dog that apparently carried her across a busy road and through a barbed-wire fence to a shed where the infant was discovered nestled with a litter of puppies, witnesses said yesterday.

The girl, named "Angel" by hospital workers, was clad in a tattered shirt and wrapped in a plastic bag when the dog found her Friday, according to Aggrey Mwalimu, owner of the shed where the baby was discovered in a poor neighborhood near the Ngong Forest in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

"When the dog picked up the baby in a dirty bag, it came and dropped her behind the wooden building where the dog has its puppies," Mwalimu said.

The 7-pound, 4-ounce infant was taken to a hospital and "is doing well, responding to treatment. She is stable ... she is on antibiotics," said Hannah Gakuo, spokeswoman for the Kenyatta National Hospital.

KHALIL SENOSI / THE AP The baby girl, thought to have been abandoned about two days before the dog found her, is doing well, hospital workers say.

The baby was found after two children reported hearing an infant's cries near their wood-and-corrugated-metal shack.

Mary Adhiambo, the children's mother, told the Daily Nation newspaper that she used warm water to wash the baby, cleaning the umbilical cord with rubbing alcohol, then dressed her in fresh clothes and fed her as neighbors gathered at the shack on hearing news of the discovery.

Residents took the infant to a nearby police station before taking her to the Kenyatta National Hospital, officers at the station said.

Doctors think the baby had been abandoned about two days before the dog discovered her, said Gakuo, the hospital spokeswoman.

"She cried a lot during admission, because her umbilical cord was infected," Gakuo said. "She is now very quiet. She just feeds and sleeps. I was there this morning and she looked at me and yawned, looked at me again and yawned."