The pregnant mother was first spotted wandering the roadside somewhere along the northern Olympic Peninsula.

A man picked her up and dropped her off at the Port Ludlow shelter – and just in time.

The mother. a 5-year-old golden retriever, was in poor health and within days of delivering her puppies. A foster home that had temporarily taken her in wasn’t comfortable with whelping a litter, so they contacted the Renton-based Evergreen Golden Retriever Rescue organization. Organization volunteers came from as far as Maple Valley to help. That’s how Susan and Richard Randall have ended up with nine puppies in the backyard of their Bellevue home.

On May 10, the organization transported the dog to the Randall home. Two days later and with the help of many volunteers, the litter arrived.

“This is the first time that a litter has been whelped,” Richard Randall said of the Evergreen Golden Retriever Rescue (EGRR), which in most cases takes in adult dogs. “So this is very unusual to have puppies. I think the closest we came was two years ago when (the organization) had six 10-week-old puppies.”

The Randalls have three grown golden retrievers of their own. The couple has volunteered with Evergreen Golden Retriever Rescue for eight years, and Susan is also the golden retriever representative for Seattle Pure Bred Dog Rescue. But they weren’t exactly ready for the recent daunting birth.

The mother had been microchipped for identity purposes. Port Ludlow authorities were able to trace her veterinarian to Nevada, where she had been treated for four years. The veterinarian released the dog’s name (Carmal) and age.

The owner who had taken her to the veterinarian was a woman who may have given Carmal away to family members, “but we don’t know past that what the history is,” Susan Randall said.

They also don’t know the sire of the litter, though several experienced breeders have determined the puppies are most likely purebred.

Carmal came to the Randalls on a Saturday. Some fellow volunteers brought overnight gear and took turns sleeping on the couch next to Carmal to watch her through the night. Finally, on Monday morning, her water broke and volunteers helped deliver five puppies.

But then the couple had to rush Carmal to a veterinarian, as one puppy, which didn’t survive, got caught in the birth canal. Five more puppies were born by C-section, one of which died five days later after its leg became infected.

After the birth, several volunteers helped bottle-feed the puppies every two hours, as Carmal wasn’t producing enough milk.

Most of the puppies have been placed with prospective owners who EGRR screened. Carmal is back in Port Ludlow with the family that fostered her and will, most likely, adopt her.

Each year, EGRR places about 80 dogs in homes. The donation to adopt one through the organization is $500.

“The advantage of groups like ours is we take pressure off the (animal) shelters, otherwise you just have an overabundance of dogs in shelters,” Richard Randall said.

The organization matches each dog with the family situation, “not just first-come, first-served,” Susan Randall said. “We like to know how much experience each family has had, as people often think that golden retrievers have the best temperament and they don’t need to be trained, which is actually not true.”