I bet every single one of you has heard and knows of the phrase man’s best friend. Yep, dogs are truly a blessing to humanity with their unconditional love and relentless enthusiasm for chowing, playing, and napping.
But what if I told you that man isn’t the only species to be a dog’s best friend? Dogs tend to befriend cats, birds, hamsters, baby chicks, horses—the list goes on and on.
Oh, you need specific examples? Well, take Fiona the majestic Pyrenees doggo, who has become best friends with a bunch of gophers at her local park, for example.
Meet Fiona, the majestic 2-year-old Great Pyrenees who's recently been making some odd friendships
Image credits: fiona_the_great_pyrenees
Meet Fiona, the absolutely majestic 2-year-old Great Pyrenees, or Pyrenean mountain dog, who has recently been making headlines for making friends with random gophers at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
Fiona and her hooman companion, Sarah, with whom Bored Panda got in touch, go down to the local park on most of their daily walks. At first, it was just Fiona, the trees, the grass, the occasional other pooch that happened to pass by, and possibly a stick.
But lately, Fiona has started noticing all of the strange holes in the ground. And it just so happened that she also noticed the critters who made those holes in the first place—the local neighborhood gophers.
The adorable doggo has made friends with some gophers on one of her walks in the park and it's cute
Image credits: fiona_the_great_pyrenees | ViralHog
Image credits: fiona_the_great_pyrenees
Though it is said that Fiona sometimes has to wait a long time for a gopher to actually pop out of their hidey-holes, she's patient enough to make it happen. And she tries daily. And happen it did. And there’s even a video!
Now, you’d expect a dog to find other animals baffling and to immediately bark, whether with good or not-so-good intentions. But not Fiona. The lovely lady is as gentle as it gets when it comes to dogs.
Though Fiona is a big dog (puts the great in Great Pyrenees), she is very gentle with the little critters
Image credits: fiona_the_great_pyrenees
In the video, Fiona is seen lying down by one of the gopher holes she found. Lo and behold, a gopher sticks its tiny little head out to check out the large white puff of cuteness that is Fiona.
For the most part, the two just stare at each other. The gopher will occasionally retreat back into its tunnel to push out some excess dirt and she will also lean in for what seems like a sniffy kiss, but the gopher chickens out at the last second and goes back into its tunnels.
Image credits: fiona_the_great_pyrenees
Fiona is like a gentle giant, leaning in for the snoot boop, trying to sniff out everything about the gopher, while the gopher looks chill, gawking at Fiona in the same kind of amazement as the doggy, but still keeping up with the daily digging schedule.
Fiona’s human companion Sarah did explain that she does that often: she thinks everyone wants to say hi to her all the time, leading to some sweet and gentle interactions. It is often hard to get her to leave and since she’s such a big girl, they spend a lot of time hanging out around gopher holes.
The video soon found its way on her Instagram and eventually YouTube, getting nearly 100k views
Image credits: fiona_the_great_pyrenees
"Fiona's favorite activities are searching for squirrels and I yell out “squirrelly” and we run from tree to tree together to try and find them. They have never let her get close though. She cries at the bottom of the tree," told Sarah of Fiona's favorite activities.
"We also walk gopher hole to hole and I point out if I think there might be a friend in there, she sniffs it out and decides whether or not to move on or stay. She could be 10 feet away but she understands I’m trying to help her and if I say 'Fiona, what about this one' she will walk over and check it out"
Image credits: fiona_the_great_pyrenees
Needless to say, Fiona tries to make friends all the time. There is another video on her Instagram of Fiona attempting to make friends with a deer that’s managed to wander by their AirBnB on their vacation. The caption read “I see you, I smell you, I like you, but I kinda have a thing going on with a gopher.”
The video of Fiona and the gopher started making headlines soon after it went online, getting thousands of views on Instagram and another 96,000+ views on YouTube.
If this article made you fall in love with Fiona, why not check out her Instagram and follow her adventures? I heard she also has a lovely cat brother named Jake Smith, so you can follow that too.
"Fiona wants desperately to be best friends with her brother Jake Smith and sometimes cries when he runs from her. He lets her get closer and closer to him but she wants more. She is always gentle," explained Sarah.
Fiona is known to make friends everywhere, including with a deer who's wandered by
Image credits: fiona_the_great_pyrenees
There's also another video of the same gopher and the same Fiona, except they look like they kiss here
But before you go, let us know what you thought of this story. Why not say hi to Fiona in the comment section below!