On the evening of June 2, Ralph Dorn searched the lake behind his house, looking for his Goldendoodle, Harley. To his surprise, he spotted the six-year-old dog about 200 feet from shore, swimming alongside another animal. After a few moments, Dorn realized that Harley was helping a tiny baby deer.
“I’m not sure how the fawn ended up in the water, but Harley didn’t hesitate—he just jumped into action,” said Dorn, 62, of Culpeper, Virginia, in a widely shared Facebook post that has since been reposted over 250,000 times.
Harley swam beside the struggling fawn, guiding it safely to shore. Once on land, Dorn assisted the fawn up a steep embankment, and Harley continued his care by gently licking the baby deer, as if comforting it.
“Harley really didn’t want to leave the fawn,” Dorn told PEOPLE. “He kept interacting with it, licking it, and showing so much concern.”
Not long after the fawn reached the shore, its mother appeared on the lawn. Dorn quickly brought Harley inside their nearby home, allowing the doe to reunite with her baby. Once Dorn and Harley left the scene, the mother and fawn disappeared into the wilderness.
However, the next morning, as Dorn and his wife, Patricia, 64, were enjoying their coffee, something seemed off.
Harley suddenly became restless, running from window to window. “When I opened the front door, we could hear the fawn bleating,” Dorn shared on Facebook.
“Harley ran into the tree line and found the fawn,” he continued. “As soon as they met, the little one stopped crying, wagged its tail, and they touched noses. After a brief moment of sniffing each other, Harley calmly returned to the house with me.”
Dorn told PEOPLE that after this short reunion, the fawn settled down, and by the end of the day, both the baby and its mother were gone. Since then, Dorn hasn’t seen them again but believes the fawn was only a few days old at the time.
