Early in the evening of June 2, Ralph Dorn explored the surface of the lake with his house in search of his Goldendoodle, Harley.
Then he noticed the cub about 200 feet from the shore. The 6-year-old dog was swimming with another animal, which a few minutes later Dorn realized was a baby deer.
“I do not know how the deer got out there, but Harley obviously did not ask why, he just got down to business,” wrote Dorn, 62, of Calpeper, Virginia, in a viral Facebook post that spread more than 250,000 times.
Harley was paddling side by side with the baby. Dorn met the animals on land and helped the cub climb up a steep slope. After lifting the deer off the water and placing it on the grass, Harley began to gently lick the deer’s body.
“Harley did not want to leave the baby,” Dorn told PEOPLE. “He just kept in touch with it, licked it, took care of it.”
The kitten’s mother appeared on the lawn immediately after the kitten reached the shore.
When Dorn spotted the mother deer, he took Harley to a nearby house. The girl waited until Dorn and Harley left, then left with her baby.
But the next morning, while Dorn and his wife, Patricia, 64, were drinking coffee, something went wrong.
“Harley was running casually from window to window. “I opened the front door we heard the baby barking,” Dorn wrote in a Facebook post.
“Harley ran to the tree line and found the baby,” he wrote.
“The little one stopped blowing, wagging his tail, they touched their noses, they smelled each other, Harley calmly returned home with me.”
“After a brief meeting with Harley, the baby settled down,” Dorn told PEOPLE.
“At the end of the day, the baby and his mother left again.” Dorn, who thinks the baby was a few days old, has not seen the couple since.
