A police officer from Dallas, Texas, has gone viral after an adorable airport photoshoot with his four-legged K-9 partner.
Officer Andre Cloyd and his pooch Zigi were patrolling at Love Field Airport at the weekend when a traveller captured a series of adorable photos of the work partners posing for selfies together.
Gina Anzaldua uploaded the photos to a dog group on Facebook and told members how Cloyd seemed to show every picture to Zigi after taking it.
‘That sweet [boy] was his partner, not just a dog,’ Anzaldua wrote in the post, which had been shared by tens of thousands of people by the time it got back to Cloyd.
Upon seeing the post, the officer shared it to his own page, writing, ‘Thank you for all the love shown to Zigi and I.’
Speaking to NBC 5, Cloyd explained how his doggie selfies began with a text message thread between him and his family.
He told the news station:
We communicate every day – maybe a phone call, a video chat, an email.
Cloyd is the only the member of his family living in north Texas, and that morning he says his mum had sent him a selfie of herself at work, wishing the entire family a good day at work.
The officer recalled:
I was on my way into work, and I said, ‘I’ll just take her a photo once I get inside’.
The pair made their way into the airport to check everything was okay when Cloyd took out his phone to take the snap, but he had no idea someone else was taking a picture too.
‘It was kind of cool that she shared it, and it was able to come full circle back to me,’ Cloyd said. ‘It was pretty cool to be part of something that big.’
With the rest of his family living far away, Cloyd said he considers Zigi and his other dog Bentley as his family.
He said:
I tell people, ‘Hey, these are my pets, these are my dogs, these are my two kids.’
We take photos together, we watch movies together, we go to the gym together.
Cloyd said being a part of the Dallas Police Department’s K-9 Unit was an ‘honour’ because he’s been an animal lover his whole life.
‘To get paid to do something you’ve loved since the age of four, it’s a privilege, definitely,’ he said. ‘Zigi’s the star, but even more so, we’re just a small piece of a unit, a department and a law enforcement community that does everything we can to ensure the safety of the passengers.’
What an incredible partnership.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.