7 Pups from the Pines

08/31/2026

Marsha Dale
aka “Dollar General Royalty” • 6 months old • female • DG Legacy Litter • 🐾

Marsha Dale comes from a prominent local family.

Prominent mostly because we have been dealing with them for years.

She is a descendant of the Dollar General dogs — a complicated Franklin County dynasty that has occupied an unreasonable amount of our lives.

And one look at Marsha Dale confirms it.

We have seen that face before.

—

The Dale bloodline is strong.

The thoughts are not.

Marsha Dale has the unmistakable Dale face: stern, skeptical, and the look of someone who has several concerns and none of the necessary information.

Behind that face is a puppy who is just thrilled to be here.

She is goofy, affectionate, playful, and deeply unserious. She likes people. She likes other dogs. She likes carrying things around. She likes being involved.

She has never encountered a situation she didn’t think could benefit from Marsha Dale.

—

Marsha Dale needs a family of her own.

Preferably one willing to appreciate that they are adopting a direct descendant of a historic Franklin County dynasty.

An heiress, technically.

To absolutely nothing.

—

There are certain moments when you look at Marsha Dale and realize genetics have a sense of humor.

The Judge Judy face.

The Dollar General ancestry.

The fact that I once caught her chewing on an empty Bud Light can.

She is definitely a Dale.

—

Foster Quote:

“She has the face of Judge Judy and the lifestyle of somebody who has definitely been asked to leave a Dollar General.”

—

Marsha Dale is funny, sweet, affectionate, ridiculous, and ready to become somebody’s dog.

That unmistakable Dale face lives on.

The ancestral wisdom does not appear to have made it.

Apply to adopt Marsha Dale:

https://linktr.ee/7pupsfromthepines 🐾🌲
https://letlove.live/dog-adoptions/ 🐾🩷

08/29/2026

Rumour got ADOPTED today, which is great because she has been looking for a permanent place to stand directly under somebody’s feet.

She found it. ❤️

Thank you to her foster for giving Rumour a place to be weird while we figured out where she belonged, and for loving her enough to help us make sure she ended up with exactly the right people.

And thank you to her new family for looking at this tiny, scruffy little busybody and deciding they would like to give her a forever home.

We think everybody made an excellent decision.

Go your own way, Rumour. 🐾🌲

08/22/2026

Reba doesn’t know what Minnesota is.

As far as Reba knows, it’s just been a very strange few days.

A few days ago, she was still living outside in the same place generations of dogs before her had lived.

And then a whole chain of people helped carry one little Dollar General legacy puppy from Franklin County all the way to Minnesota.

From the only life she’s ever known to the one where she gets to be somebody’s dog.

Go home, Reba. 🩷

Thank you to every person who helped get her there — especially our friends at Let Love Live / Let Love Live MN for being the kind of partner that makes endings like this possible. 🐾🌲

08/21/2026

One more ask before we move forward with other arrangements for these four.

If you’ve been around Scroggins for the last few years, you probably know where these puppies came from.

They are the last four puppies from the “Legacy Litter” — the final loose end in the Dollar General Dog Dynasty that started with one unspayed stray dog in 2023 and eventually became a multi-generational population of dogs in our community.

For two years, this community has played a part in changing that story.

And now we need your help finishing it.

—

Over the last couple of months, 7 Pups from the Pines and Let Love Live have been working together to get 14 puppies from where they started into forever homes.

Now we're down to the last four.

They’re six months old, approximately 25–30 pounds, and they are genuinely wonderful puppies — playful, smart, affectionate and remarkably well-adjusted considering where they started.

They have a path forward. Let Love Live runs transport every two weeks, and puppies have moved on every transport since we started working together.

What they need now is somewhere to live while we get them the rest of the way home.

Preferably, indoor foster homes.

You do not have to take all four.

You don’t even have to take two.

If four people in this community each make room for one puppy, it would make this last stretch a whole lot easier.

And if you can only help for a couple of weeks, tell us that. Even short-term help buys us time.

7 Pups from the Pines provides the food, crate, supplies, veterinary care and support.

We need you to provide the space.

—

We do have a backup plan, and these puppies will have somewhere safe to go.

But it isn’t an ideal long-term solution. We can temporarily house two of them in our climate-controlled kennel building, but that space was built for emergencies, medical recovery, and short-term housing — not for puppies to live in indefinitely. The other two would be living outdoors and would not have climate-controlled housing.

So before we move forward with those arrangements, we want to ask our community one more time for something better: foster homes.

Because this has never really been one rescue’s problem to solve.

These dogs were born here.

Their grandmother roamed our roads, parking lots and businesses.

People in this community watched this population grow, and people in this community have helped us stop it.

Collective problems require collective solutions.

Sometimes your piece of the solution is enormous.

Sometimes it’s just letting one goofy six-month-old puppy sleep at your house for a little while.

We have spent nearly two years working toward the end of this story.

There are four puppies left.

If you can make room for one, please fill out our Foster Form ⬇️:

https://linktr.ee/7pupsfromthepines

This community helped change this story.

Let’s finish it together. 🐾🌲

08/20/2026

🚨This is URGENT. We need safe placement for these puppies by tomorrow.

One of the hardest parts of rescue is how abruptly a foster situation can change.

And sometimes that means dogs who already have a plan suddenly need somewhere else to live while we finish it.

That’s where we are with the Dollar General “Legacy Litter” puppies.

There are four puppies currently being worked by two rescues, with an established pathway toward adoption.

We can move two into our kennel building. That leaves two puppies who need foster homes — either together, or separately with two different fosters.

We can’t give an exact end date, and we don’t want to promise one that we can’t guarantee. What we can tell you is that these aren’t puppies sitting in foster waiting for someone to eventually figure out what comes next. We are actively working their placement along with Let Love Live and continuing to move them toward adoption.

We provide everything — food, crates, supplies, veterinary care and whatever else they need. The foster provides the safe place to live and the day-to-day care while we do the rest.

If you have room for one (or two) and can help us bridge this particular gap, please fill out our foster form here: https://linktr.ee/7pupsfromthepines

🐾🌲

08/19/2026

Yesterday, three dogs got bitten by a snake.

And right now, we need to raise $1,700 to pay for their emergency care.

If these dogs look familiar, they should.

Bella is Vanilla’s mother. Peaches and Grizzly are her older sister and brother.

They are three of the four adult dogs we’ve spent this summer working with alongside their owner and Let Love Live while we helped Vanilla and her littermates.

These are owned dogs.

They are loved dogs.

And their owner has done exactly what we’ve spent years wishing more people would do.

When he needed help, he asked for it.

And then he worked with us every step of the way.

He let us vaccinate and vet the puppies. He worked with us to get them into rescue and adopted homes. He got all four of his adult dogs vaccinated, vetted, and spayed/neutered.

He didn’t surrender the dogs he loves.

He asked for help taking care of them.

We helped stop another generation of puppies from being born, got the puppies already here where they needed to go, and left four loved dogs with the person who loves them.

And then something completely unforeseeable happened to three of those dogs at once.

—

Yesterday afternoon, we got a call that something was very wrong.

The dogs’ faces and throats were swelling rapidly.

A little over a month ago, Vanilla — Bella’s eight-week-old puppy — was found shot three times and killed.

So when we got the call that something was suddenly wrong with three more dogs from the same family, we weren’t willing to make assumptions or wait around to see what happened.

We put three dogs with heads twice their normal size into a truck and went straight to Piney Woods Animal Clinic.

The vet found snake bites on all three.

Despite the swelling, they were alert. Their breathing was okay. Their gums looked good.

We were given the option to run bloodwork to see whether the venom was affecting their ability to clot.

It was optional.

But we said yes.

Thank God we did.

The results showed serious abnormalities in their blood clotting.

What looked from the outside like three cartoonishly swollen but otherwise stable dogs, was actually venom affecting their bodies in a way we couldn’t see.

They needed antivenom and overnight hospitalization.

Antivenom was brought in after hours, and all three spent the night at Piney Woods receiving treatment and being monitored.

The initial treatment, bloodwork and medications cost $536.

Antivenom and overnight hospitalization brought the total to approximately $1,700.

Three dogs.
Three snake bites.

$1,700.

—

Helping with emergency veterinary care for owned pets has always been part of the work we do.

Not every animal that needs help needs a new home.

Sometimes they just need help.

If we have the ability to help a dog right then, we will.

We can figure out the money afterward.

But 7 Pups does not have $1,700 sitting in a fund.

What we do have is a way to make sure an animal gets urgent medical care when it needs it.

Whatever we are not able to raise for Bella, Peaches and Grizzly’s care will ultimately be carried on our personal CareCredit card.

That card does not belong to 7 Pups — it belongs to us personally.

It gives us a way to say yes when something cannot wait for a fundraiser.

But for it to keep doing that, we have to be able to put the money back.

So today, we need help.

We need to raise $1,700.

If you can help us cover Bella, Peaches and Grizzly’s emergency care so we can keep that option available for the next animal who needs us, please do.

You can donate here:
https://linktr.ee/7pupsfromthepines

Or you can make a payment directly toward their veterinary care by calling:

Piney Woods Animal Clinic
(903) 946-9200
Account: 7 Pups from the Pines
For: Bella, Peaches & Grizzly

7 Pups from the Pines is a registered 501(c)(3), and donations are tax deductible.

—

We couldn’t change what happened to Vanilla.

But yesterday, we could help her family.

So we did.

Because we can get the money back.

We cannot get the dogs back.

🐾🌲

08/18/2026

One of the hardest parts of rescue is how abruptly a foster situation can change.

And sometimes that means dogs who already have a plan suddenly need somewhere else to live while we finish it.

That’s where we are with the Dollar General “Legacy Litter” puppies.

There are four puppies currently being worked by two rescues, with an established pathway toward adoption.

We can move two into our kennel building. That leaves two puppies who need foster homes — either together, or separately with two different fosters.

We can’t give an exact end date, and we don’t want to promise one that we can’t guarantee. What we can tell you is that these aren’t puppies sitting in foster waiting for someone to eventually figure out what comes next. We are actively working their placement along with Let Love Live and continuing to move them toward adoption.

We provide everything — food, crates, supplies, veterinary care and whatever else they need. The foster provides the safe place to live and the day-to-day care while we do the rest.

If you have room for one (or two) and can help us bridge this particular gap, please fill out our foster form here: https://linktr.ee/7pupsfromthepines

🐾🌲

08/13/2026

Threatening to shoot a dog if a rescue doesn’t take it is not asking for help.

And bringing that threat to us was a spectacular miscalculation.

Less than a month ago, an eight-week-old puppy in our care was intentionally shot three times and killed.

So understand this clearly — we will not be coerced with a dog’s life.

Wrong audience.

A message threatening to shoot a dog if we don’t take him — complete with “I’m not a good shot” and “it will not be pretty” — is not desperation. It is a threat against an innocent animal intended to force our hand.

Shelter staff were reportedly screamed and cussed at so severely over this same dog that they had to hang up the phone.

Public threats are now being made about bringing dogs into town so the shelter will be forced to take them.

When the shelter can’t fix it, attack the shelter.

When the rescue can’t fix it, threaten the dog.

When the system can’t fix it, threaten the community.

No.

Nobody has suddenly discovered a broken system the rest of us somehow failed to notice. This is the same broken system that shelters, rescues, and volunteers in this county have been standing in the middle of for years.

There is plenty to be angry about when it comes to animal welfare in Franklin County.

We are angry too.

So be angry.

Then do something useful with it.

Make more calls. Network the dog. Advocate for better resources. Help carry some of the weight instead of attacking the people already carrying it.

A dog’s life is not leverage.

And if this dog is harmed, responsibility for that choice will not belong to the shelter that couldn’t take him, the rescue that didn’t have a foster, or a broken system that failed to produce an immediate solution.

It will belong to the person who chose to hurt him.

You are not “out of options.”

You’re out of patience.

🐾🌲

Updating to add:

The point of the post is being lost.

Nobody said the system works. It doesn’t. Nobody said people should keep ten dogs they cannot care for. Nobody said livestock owners should allow their animals to be harmed.

I see a lot of people asking what “they” are supposed to do and very few asking what they themselves are willing to do.

I see a lot of waiting for someone else to fix it.

7 Pups was built by one person who got tired of waiting for somebody else to do something. It cannot absorb every unwanted dog in this county.

Franklin County did not get here overnight. This problem has been allowed to compound for generations, in plain sight, while the same small handful of people are expected to deal with the consequences.

If one person can build and operate a rescue here, imagine what this county could accomplish if more people were willing to carry some of the weight instead of asking why someone else hasn’t fixed it yet.

Do not stand on the sidelines complaining that nobody is fixing the problem while attacking the people who are actually trying.

Take that anger to the people with the power and resources to change the system. Or better yet, put some of it to work yourself.

Because the people already doing the work are the wrong audience for coercive threats.

That is the point. — in Scroggins.