It's not unusual for visually-impaired humans to rely on a guide dog - but now a shelter in the UK has found a blind border collie with his own inseparable canine companion.
Best friends Bonnie and Clyde were brought to the animal shelter in Norfolk after they were found wandering the streets in a rain storm.
When the pair are together Clyde, five, seems as capable as a fully sighted dog - but he won't move unless Bonnie, two, is close.
Bonnie guides him on walks or towards food and lets him rest on her when he becomes disorientated.
Cherie Cootes, who runs the Meadown Green Dog Rescue Centre in Loddon, Norfolk, said: "He totally relies on her the whole time. When she walks she tends to stop and make sure he's there - she does look out for him."
Vicky Bell, a spokeswoman for Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, said she had never heard of a dog voluntarily acting as a guide for another dog.
"There's absolutely no option of homing them separately - they have to go as a pair," she said. "This is a very unusual case - it's such a lovely story.
"Some dogs take to guiding better than others because they naturally have the right temperament."
[Source: SkyNews.com]
Here's your "awww" for the day: two newborn red pandas, rejected by their mother, have found a surrogate mom in a friendly dog, who's nursing the cubs as her own.
The red pandas were born at the Taiyuan Zoo in China's Shanxi province June 25, and were immediately rejected by their mother as a large crowd of zoo visitors looked on, Xinhua News Service reported.
Zoo staff quickly began the search for a surrogate, and chose the dog from among three canine candidates.
"It's good-natured and has sufficient milk. The baby bears seem to like it, too," zoo staffer Ha Guojiang told Xinhua.
Unfortunately, being a surrogate has caused the dog to refuse to nurse her own newborn puppy, but Ha has taken over feeding the pup.
Red pandas, also called lesser pandas, are furry, tree-dwelling, raccoon-like mammals that are a protected species in China, like their black-and-white Giant Panda relatives.
[Source: NYDailyNews.com]
