CBS News team covering the Morocco earthquake finds a tiny puppy alive in the rubble

Marrakesh – In the wake of the powerful earthquake that struck Morocco, CBS News found life amid the rubble. While reporting in Talaat Ni’aqoub, close to the epicenter of the devastating 6.8-magnitude earthquake The earthquake killed nearly 3,000 peopleWe heard faint screams coming from the pile of rubble.

Behind a pile of crumbling ash blocks in Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains, a small, dark brown creature, about the size of a hamster, appeared disoriented and was struggling to move. It turned out to be a puppy, so his little eyes were still closed.

He was fully exposed to the hot North African sun, his mouth full of dirt, as he groped for his missing mother. There were no signs of it, any potential owner, or the rest of the litter.

I carried him into the shade of our car while my team members found some milk. A Moroccan aid worker even donated a baby bottle for us to try feeding him with.

Then we drove about five hours back to Marrakesh, over the same treacherous bumpy roads prone to rockslides and traffic jams that made search and rescue efforts in the aftermath of the deadly earthquake so difficult.

We put it in a cardboard box to keep it safe, and lined with a bath towel. But he ended up spending a lot of his time in our arms keeping warm.

It was on these bumpy roads that the pup found a forever family.

“I would love to embrace it,” said Steve Argyle, the CBS News engineer responsible for handling communications for our team on the ground.

“I think I’ll call him Poppity,” he said. “It’s short for the Welsh word for microwave. My partner and I have been wanting a dog for a while, and that’s the name we’ve been keeping.”

When we arrived in Marrakesh, we took Bobti straight to a vet. Fortunately, Bhupti was in excellent health.

But because the orphaned puppy – born just days before the earthquake – is so small, it needs to be fed every three hours.

Meanwhile, Argyle, the new puppy’s father, will have to return to London. The vet has offered to care for the puppy for the next few weeks while Argyle sorts through the paperwork to bring Bobti from Morocco to his new home.