“We pooled some cash to get food and alcohol. Our beer money was converted into a puppy food fund after the third day.”
Bachelor parties are typically associated with vice, not virtue, but these guys who were partying in the woods got the chance to do some truly good deeds, so they took it.
Mitchell Craddock, a resident of Vicksburg, Michigan, and seven of his pals were indulging in beer and hanging out in a cabin in the Tennessee woods to celebrate Craddock’s impending nuptials. They were preparing breakfast one morning when a lovely female visitor knocked on the door.
According to Trevor Jennings, a friend of the groom, “it all started while we were cooking bacon our first morning on the trip with the door to the cabin open.” They then unexpectedly noticed a mother dog sitting in the doorway.
We saw she was in poor condition when we went outside to pet her, according to Jennings. “You could see her ribs and she was eating any scrap of food we gave her.”
She drank water from bowl after bowl.
“It was obvious she had some pups at some point, but she was not producing milk when she found us so we thought the puppies were bigger,” Jennings said.
The bachelor’s celebration went on. She was waiting for them when they returned from their business in the town. She would meet us when we got back every time.
“She was such a sweet dog that once we gained her trust, she was happy to see us, wagging her tail – just a big sweetheart,” the groom Craddock said to ABC News. “We pooled some cash to get food and alcohol. Our beer money was converted into a puppy food fund after the third day.
The boys continued to take care of the girl who was disrupting the celebration while bringing back some dog food. Jennings added, “But we observed she was quite possessive of a certain location in the woods, especially at night. So one morning we made the decision to visit that location, and when we got there, we saw the den and a pup poking his head out.
To get the puppies out—all seven of them—one of the guys dove headfirst into the hole. The mother dog’s name was Annie.
After that, the bachelor party was a bit different.
The guys spread out their suitcases to make beds for the dogs. They went out and got supplies.
Then the guys gave the puppies their first baths. “We washed all the dogs, as they were dirty and full of fleas,” Jennings said.
After this, there was no way the guys were going to let the dogs go back to the woods. Every single puppy was distributed between the guys and their family members.
The mother dog, Annie, was adopted by the groom’s grandparents – along with one of her puppies.
“We all live within about a 5-mile radius of each other and hang out most weekends,” Jennings said. “We typically bring the dogs along with us so they still see each other.” Jennings kept one of the boy puppies and named him Gunner.
“It was definitely not what we had expected to happen when we loaded up and headed eight hours to spend a week together,” Jennings said. “We were all glad when we could help Annie and her pups – it also seemed meant to be that we came back to Michigan: eight dogs and eight guys.”
When asked if Jennings would call himself an animal lover, he said, “I do love dogs, and all of us who went on the trip had a family dog already. But this is the first dog I have had that is a rescue.”
“I would say the bachelor party was a success,” he said.
