Dog Rescues Fawn From Lake, Duo Reunite A Day Later

CULPEPER, VA — The friendship between two animals, in this case a dog and baby deer, can be as tight as human kinship.

That was evidenced earlier this month when a beloved pet dog risked danger himself to find, and save, a baby deer that was struggling in the middle of a lake in Culpeper, Virginia.

Ralph Dorn shared on Facebook photos and videos of his goldendoodle dog, Harvey, swimming out into the middle of the lake behind his home on June 2. Harvey was swimming back to shore alongside the fawn and embraced the very young deer with gentle licks as the dog and fawn were on the grass.

Dorn told People magazine Harvey “didn’t want to leave the fawn.”

“He just kept interacting with it, licking it, caring for it,” Dorn said.

Mother deer soon after showed up, and Dorn took Harvey inside.

The next morning, in a scene that very well could have come from the 1981 hit movie “The Fox and the Hound,” Harvey grew antsy, moving back and forth along a window. Dorn took the dog outside, where they heard that same fawn bleating, Dorn wrote on Facebook.

"Harley ran into the tree line and found the fawn," he wrote. "The little one stopped bleating, tail wagging, they touched noses sniffed each other and Harley came calmly back to the house with me."

Dorn told People the fawn and its mother were gone by the end of the day, and they haven’t returned since.

Harvey, always a sweet dog, “has always been like that with children and animals,” Dorn told People.

“He loves them all.”