CatersWhat can I say about dogs? They’re loyal, brave, and will do their very best to cheer you up when ice cream just isn’t doing the trick.
And as though we needed any further proof dogs are the best thing to ever grace this earth, one brave pup has saved the life of an abandoned baby koala by cuddling it.
Asha the golden retriever let the tiny koala snuggle up in her fur in September last year, giving her proud owner the shock of her life when she found them together one morning.
It’s likely that the koala joey became separated from its mother during the night and wandered onto the porch where five-year-old Asha was sleeping.
Kerry McKinnon, 45, from Strathdownie, Victoria, Australia, was proud Asha was able to provide comfort with her warm fur.
In fact, the mum of three said the helpless koala would ‘never have made it through the night’ if it hadn’t been cuddled up to Asha, due to temperatures in the area plummeting to an icy five degrees centigrade overnight.
CatersKerry discovered the unlikely duo early in the morning when her husband yelled out to her that she needed to come and have a look at something.
She said:
I didn’t know what he was talking about at first but then I saw this tiny koala snuggled on top of Asha. I just burst out laughing. Poor Asha didn’t know what to think, she just kept looking at me with such a confused look.
She looked a bit guilty when I came out to see what was going on. Her expression was hilarious. She kept looking back at the koala but she wasn’t trying to get him off her or anything. She was happy to let him snuggle into her.
CatersJust look how cute they are together! If I could put a heart-eye emoji within an article, just know I’d be doing it right now.
The proud dog owner continued:
I think the baby koala fell out of his mum’s pouch and didn’t know what to do. He would have just wandered over to our back porch and seen the dogs in their beds, then decided to snuggle in Asha’s fur because it’s nice and warm.
Asha definitely saved the koalas life by keeping him warm. He would have died out there if left alone all night. The poor thing could have been taken by a fox or something too.
CatersKerry said it ‘wasn’t easy’ trying to separate the two – with the koala putting up a ‘huge fuss’ when she tried to remove it from Asha’s back.
She added the little koala is doing well after being checked out by a vet – and is now being looked after by a local koala carer until it can be released back into the wild.
Kerry said:
I think dogs have that protective instinct. The koala didn’t want to leave Asha’s back. When we took the koala off to wrap it in a blanket, it hissed at me and carried on.
I think it would have been happy to have just slept there all day. It was really an amazing thing to see and so uniquely Australian.
I wish I lived in Australia now so I would get to witness something as cute as that.
A baby koala and a golden retriever – what more could you want.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).