A man surprising his dog during his lunch break has melted hearts online.
Eric Howe lives in New England with his 14-year-old crossbreed dog Chelsea.
“Chelsea is the sweetest old lady ever,” Howe told Newsweek. “I don’t often have time to go home at lunch, so she was very surprised to see me.”
@chelseathedog_ig/Instagram
In the adorable footage, Chelsea—who appears to be waking up from a nap—is so excited to see her owner she instantly begins rubbing her head against him and seems to almost “smile.”
“She was upstairs sleeping when I arrived home and it took her quite awhile to come down and investigate who was in the house,” said Howe who set up the camera to capture the adorable moment.
On Reddit, the video received over 25,000 upvotes from delighted viewers. One commenter said: “Both of you are so cute!!”
Another Redditor wrote: “This video makes me so happy.”
Faithful and loving animals, the reaction dogs have when they see their owners after a period apart has even been proven to be chemical.
The hormone oxytocin—sometimes known as the love hormone—is released in dogs, prompting excitement to greet their owners who in turn experience their own surge of oxytocin.
While dogs have routines, it is unlikely that they have a real sense of time. Dogs have episodic memories, meaning they are only able to remember certain events. This means that while they will remember you leaving the house, it is unlikely they would understand how long you had been away.
“I set the camera up because Chelsea has a tendency to ‘smile’ when I first get home and I wanted to catch it on camera,” said Howe. “As you can see in the video, the more I talk to her the bigger her smile becomes. It’s even more cute because of how sleepy she was.”
One commenter said: “Best lunch ever! I hope there were some pets and scratches in addition to the snuggles and hopefully maybe a treat,” to which Howe replied that Chelsea was given an even better treat than that—she went back to work with him for the rest of the day.
“I couldn’t bring myself to leave her home after she got so excited to see me, so I decided to bring her to work with me after the video,” explained Howe.
“She’s a very affectionate dog and she also has some funny tendencies,” said Howe. “A lot of dogs show affection by licking their owners, but Chelsea doesn’t ever lick. Instead, she likes to ‘mush’ her face into me as you can see in the video.”
“The happy grunts, can’t help but love those. So sweet,” said one thrilled viewer of the video, while another Redditor simply said: “What a sweetie.”
Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@newsweek.com with some details about your best friend and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.
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