Why Owner Is 'Aspiring To Have a Love' Like Golden Retriever and His Toys

One golden retriever's adorable way of showing love for his toys has melted hearts this week.

Golden retriever Teddy lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with his owner Johnathan Lower. Four years old, he has an incredible 6.6 million followers on TikTok.

In a recent video that has been viewed over 8 million times, Teddy was captured sharing his love for his toys on the couch.

In the caption, his owner joked that he was "aspiring to have a love like Teddy and his toys."

"Teddy does this regularly with his toys. He loves to play with them and then hold them up and admire them before he puts them back down and plays with them some more," Lower told Newsweek.

It isn't just the zebra toy in the video that Teddy loves to hold up and admire, in fact, Lower explained that he does it with plenty of his toys.

"Teddy usually does this with his monkey toys, his zebra toys, or sometimes his lion toys usually if they have four arms or legs. It's always the cutest thing to see," said Lower. "Sometimes, I can't quite catch it on film fast enough, but this instance, I was eating breakfast at the table and caught him doing it."

But do our dogs really form a connection with their toys? A study published in the journal Animal Cognition in 2022 revealed that dogs actually store key sensory features about their toys so that they can easily recall them in the future.

Researchers from the Family Dog Project at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, trained three gifted word learner dogs and 10 typical family dogs to fetch a toy and get a reward.

The dogs searched for the targeted toy among four others, first with the lights on and then with the lights off. All of the dogs successfully selected the trained toys, both in the light and in the dark, but it took them longer to find the toys in the dark.

In the dark, dogs were more likely to spend the majority of time sniffing for the toy, but found the correct one nonetheless. Researchers concluded that dogs look for what the toy looks like, how it smells and how it feels to identify and differentiate them from each other.

Millions of TikTok users loved the footage so much they rushed to share reactions and responses in the comments.

Viewer Jessica wrote: "Golden retrievers are just toddlers with lots of hair," while Blythe Coleman said: "Such innocent, pure love and admiration. We don't deserve dogs."

"I've been married 15 years and never been looked at like this," joked TikToker Dee.

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.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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