An 18-month-old girl and her family dog went viral after parents revealed the pair have been sharing toys and even pacifiers.
36-year-old Gemma Hill from Birmingham, UK, says she and her partner have been trying to wean their toddler daughter Bonnie off pacifiers only for the girl to turn tables on them and get their family dog hooked on the soothers as well.
Thanks to the influence of his human sister, Rafa the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel now constantly roams their house and garden while sucking on pacifiers.
As Gemma claimed, Rafa is so addicted to dummies he starts whining and squealing whenever he can’t find one.
“Bonnie’s now 18 months old and we’ve been trying to wean her off the dummies completely unsuccessfully,” the radio host said.
“I’ll take the dummies away but they’ll turn up. Bonnie will just hide them in little corners of the house so we don’t know where they are.
“She’ll just appear with one and we’ll be thinking ‘how the heck did you get that?’”
To make matters worse for her parents, Bonnie also decided to let her dog in on her little secret and share her pacifiers with the pooch who now helps her hide them around the house.
“It turns out that she’s been secretly giving dummies to Rafa. The dog sucks dummies now like he’s a baby, it’s ridiculous,” Gemma added.
“I didn’t see the first exchange. It’s only been recently where I’ve walked into a room and found her stuffing one into his mouth. Or we’ll come across him and he has his own dummy from somewhere.
“He was crying outside her cot the other day. At first we thought he misses her, but no, he wanted to get a dummy that was left in there. He’s hooked on the dummies as well.”
The baffled mom went on to say that her daughter loves Rafa very much and that they share everything including food and toys.
Their friendship, however, has made the parents’ mission to get them hooked off pacifiers that much harder.
Gemma continued: “Rafa’s being trained at the moment and he’s quite a good dog on the whole. It’s not like he’s eating them or chewing them, which is what we were worrying about, he literally uses it like a dummy.
“When he’s had enough he’ll spit it out, it’s quite impressive. I don’t know what the long-term solution is in terms of weaning them both off the dummies.
“I think Bonnie is going to have to be the one to be weaned off them, so she can’t enable Rafa. She’s the root of all this.”
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