In a touching tale of interspecies friendships, Reddit user Oakenboken took to the web to tell the story of his two Labrador Retrievers, yellow Lab Bosko and his brother, Duke, who cared for a nearly frozen calf on their owner’s ranch six months ago.
“His mother was too weak to care for him,” Oakenboken described of the calf, “and the cold and wet had nearly taken him.”
Loyal Labrador Bosko found the calf out on the ranch and alerted Oakenboken’s mother and grandmother. The two women ran outside to find that the calf had gone into hypothermia. Working quickly, they pulled the calf inside and tried to warm him with blankets, heating pads, and a heater.
“His nose was frozen stiff and his eyes looked dead, but he was breathing…if barely,” Oakenboken wrote of the hypothermic calf.
While the calf struggled to survive, Bosko and his brother, Duke, refused to leave the calf’s bedside, caring for the calf in shifts throughout the night.
As the calf’s breathing became more regular and he started to take milk from a bottle, it was clear that the little guy was going to make it. Oakenboken says his family has since named the calf Zeke, and that though he is smaller than most of the other cows, he is healthy and living back with the herd — something that wouldn’t have been possible without the valiant efforts of Bosko and Duke.
Oakenboken posted a photo slideshow of Bosko, Duke, and Zeke the calf to his Imgur page a week ago and has been delighting animal lovers all over the world ever since; the slideshow has earned over 280,000 views in only 7 days.
Sources: imgur.com, HuffingtonPost.com
