
The puppies in the photo above were dumped in a plastic carrier bag at the RSPCA’s Harnsworth Animal Hospital in North London last month.
The RSPCA vets determined that they were Staffordshire bull terriers and began rearing them as any abandoned newborn whelps.
However, don’t you think these puppies look a little strange?
The coat is a bit long. The muzzles are a bit pointed. I bet all of them have white-tipped tails.
Now unusual for Staffie crosses, I suppose, but the litter looked awfully uniform to be crossbreeds.

Well, as the weeks have progressed, the real identity of these “Staffies” has become apparent.
They aren’t bull-and-terriers after all.
They aren’t any breed of domestic dog at all.
They aren’t even members of the genus Canis.
It turns out that they are red fox kits!

Not very much like young staffies, are they?
The young foxes have been turned over to Fox Project Charity, where they are doing fine.
I don’t know if they can be released or not.
But it’s not the first time fox kits have been mistaken for domestic dogs. Last year I reported on a Chinese man whose Pomeranian was actually an Arctic fox.
And I should point out that is very hard to determine the exact identity of any neonatal puppies. I recently read about a golden retriever breeder who was raising field line dogs in England. She took the dogs to the vet to have their dewclaws removed, but the vet thought the puppies were cockers. So he docked them, too. After all, most goldens in Britain aren’t of that rich color, but it is common among English cockers.
So yes, it is easy to make these mistakes.
But at least no one chopped their tails off!
***
Please note that the British convention is to call juvenile foxes “cubs.”
As a North American, I cannot bring myself to use such nomenclature.
If it is not a big cat or a bear, it can’t have cubs.
Wolves have puppies.
Foxes have kits.
So do all mustelids, including otters and badgers.
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