A heartwarming footage has captured the moment a rescue donkey smiles and puts her head on a blues guitarist as he plays music for her.
The footage features famous celebrity photographer Christopher Ameruoso who started playing music for rescue animals a year ago.
Christopher, who hails from Los Angeles, California is famous for photographing celebrities including Pink, Megan Fox, and Pamela Anderson as well as their pets.
In the heartwarming footage, Christopher can be seen strumming a sliding blues riff to the music-loving donkey Hazel who lovingly peers over his right shoulder as if trying to listen to the music more closely.
Christopher shared the video on the internet and wrote: ‘If this doesn’t melt your heart you may not be human.
‘This brought me to tears today. Every living creature feels and has moments of joy just like we do.’
The photographer started playing for rescue animals on a friend’s sanctuary last year and since then he has been continuously doing so. Christopher said: ‘I love music and play music.
‘I always kept saying to myself that animals must enjoy music and I went up to the sanctuary a couple of times and brought my guitar and would walk around the pens to go see which ones reacted the best.
‘Hazel was in with about eight other donkeys and a horse and a goat in one pen they were in.
‘She just took to the music – it was unbelievable. She just walked up and stood next to me and was really curious about the guitar and she was putting her nose on it.
‘She ended up being the favorite. Sometimes I’ll go there and it’ll be really hot and the animals will just want to do their own thing but Hazel just comes running down the hill.
‘What she does is she loves to stand over me. I sit on a stool and she’ll stand over me and it’ll be all about her head – she loves to put her head up against me really close.
‘I hate to say she’s my favorite because I play for a few, but she really is. She’s my favorite now.
‘It makes me feel good. I get a lot of gratification out of it.
‘I believe this video is showing a side of donkeys that people don’t usually see.
‘We’re used to seeing photos of donkeys being used as a tool for moving things and just as work horses.
‘People don’t realize they have personalities. Especially in the video, once she takes a step back and rests her head on my neck like that, it just melts people.’
After trying different musical instruments, Christopher claims Hazel likes the three-stringed high pitched strum stick the most.
Christopher said: ‘She really enjoys the strum stick. There’s something about the high pitch that she really enjoys.
‘But she also likes when I play the larger guitar because she likes the vibration that comes out of the body. She likes to put her head up against the vibration.
‘I was playing a Beatles song for her, Norwegian Wood, and I was playing it up on that strum stick and she was adorable.
‘She couldn’t get close enough to it. It’s almost like she wants to become a part of it.
‘I swear sometimes she’s even trying to talk to me because she just moves her lip. It’s really cute. There’s something special there with her.
‘It definitely relaxes her. Sometimes she’ll fall asleep. She’ll close her eyes and just be still. It definitely relaxes her for sure. I noticed it relaxes all the animals, it really does.’
The man has played for several rescue animals at the sanctuary including a cheeky wild boar named Gwendlyn and a ‘rambunctious’ teenage bull named Romeo.
Christopher is now hoping to bring over his celebrity friends to play music for the animals at the sanctuary.
He said: ‘I’m planning on bringing some of my celebrity friends and musicians to join me in performing for animals. Really they’d like to make a segment out of this which is what we’re working on.
‘My dream is to get Pink to come up there and perform with me and just sit and play guitar.’