Stray dogs pay their respects to animal lover at her funeral

It was a touching tribute from an unexpected group of animals - a pack of stray dogs stood watch over the funeral of a woman who dedicated her life to helping animals.

"My mom has always been good with all animals and people," Margarita Suarez's daughter Patricia Urrutia told ABC News. "Always fed the dogs on her block and the 20 stray cats that lived there."

So when a group of dogs entered the funeral home to lie with Suarez's casket, her family was both shocked and delighted.

Part of what made the canine honor guard so unexpected was that the dogs were not the ones that Suarez had cared for. The 71-year-old woman had lived in Merida Yucatan, but her funeral service was in a town more than 830 miles away.

Urrutia told ABC News the dogs stayed with her mother all day, left during the night, but then reappeared before they took her body away to be cremated.

"I swear by God that it was beautiful, marvelous," Urrutia said.

Workers at the home had never seen anything like it before, according to Urrutia.

"When I was in a moment of so much pain these dogs that came, they showed me that everything was going to be OK," Urrutia told ABC.