Joe Kahlo
Meet Harley, a 6-year-old Goldendoodle who is being hailed a hero after saving a baby deer from drowning in a lake near his Virginia home.
“Not sure how the fawn got out there but Harley obviously didn’t ask why, he just jumped into action,” said Harley’s human, Ralph Dorn, 62, of Culpeper, Virginia.
A Facebook post of the rescue posted by Ralph, who is a retired Marine Corps pilot, has gone viral.
The event took place on the 2nd of June. Ralph was looking around for Harley before spotting him in the lake about 200 feet from the shore.
He was guiding a little lost fawn back to the shore, paddling side-by-side with it to make sure it got to safety.
Ralph then went to assist the baby deer, who he believed to only be a few days old, up a steep ledge and onto the grass.
All the while a very excited and wet Harley began to sniff and lick his new friend, presumably to make it feel safe.
“Harley didn’t want to leave the fawn,” Dorn told People. “He just kept interacting with it, licking it, caring for it.”
Eventually, the babies mother arrived, so Ralph and Harley went inside and left the mom and fawn to be reunited.
The next morning, the fawn came back to the house. Harley could hear the fawns squeal from outside and started rushing from window to window trying to find his friend.
The moment that Ralph opened the door to the house, Harley bolted out, running straight to the baby deer.
“The little one stopped bleating, tail wagging, they touched noses sniffed each other and Harley came calmly back to the house with me,” Ralph wrote.
Ralph always knew that Harley had a heart of gold.
“We could tell right away, even as a puppy, he had such a good heart,” Dorn said. “He has always been like that with children and animals. He loves them all.”
Well done Harley!
