SAINT ALBERT, Alberta (UPI) -- A mother dog in Canada was photographed caring for another dog's puppies that had been separated from their mother at a pet motel in Canada.

The photo shared to Facebook by Barkers Pet Motel and Grooming shows the motherly dog Maggie, who had recently separated from her own puppies, lying down with the newly arrived puppies from Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society.

"[Maggie] must have heard the babies crying and let herself out of her kennel to lay next to their room," they wrote on Facebook. We put them together for a while and all three of them were so happy!

Staff watched Maggie via security camera as she exited her kennel to pace up and down the row of pens stopping to tend to the crying puppies as often as possible.

"We watched her on the cameras and she went straight around and she found their room. She paid them a lot of attention and you could see her little tail wagging," motel owner Sandra Aldred told CBC Edmonton. And she'd do the little bow down to them and poke them through the chainlink gate of their room. She just decided that was where she was going to stay until we came to get her.

Aldred said she believed caring for the young animals was a therapeutic experience for both Maggie and the puppies.

"She came to me and she was really happy, and then she took me back to their room as if to say, 'I really need to meet these puppies,'" she said. The puppies needed her and she needed them. It was pretty perfect.

Copyright 2016 by United Press International