Heroic Dog Rescues a Baby Deer From Drowning and Continues to Care for Her

Ralph Dorn combed the lake’s surface behind his house in the early afternoon of June 2 for Harley, his Goldendoodle. Dorn noticed the 6-year-old dog swimming with another animal, which he later found was a tiny young deer, around 200 feet from land.

Harley paddled beside the fawn the entire way to land. The fawn needed help climbing a narrow ledge when Dorn encountered them on land. Harley took the fawn out of the water and set her down on the grass before starting to softly kiss her body. According to Dorn, “Harley didn’t want to leave the fawn.” He simply persisted in connecting with it, licking it, and tending to it.

Soon after the fawn hit the shore, its mother came into the yard. Dorn brought Harley inside their house as soon as he spotted the mother deer. When Dorn and Harley had left, the doe waited until they were gone before leaving with her young. The following morning, though, as Dorn and his 64-year-old wife Patricia sipped their coffee, something wasn’t right.

“Harley began to become agitated and ran from window to window. To our surprise, when opening the front door, the fawn’s bleating could be heard, ” Dorn said in his Facebook update. He stated, “Harley rushed into the tree line and found the fawn. The baby stopped bleating, the animals brushed noses and gave each other a sniff before Harley calmly followed me back inside.

According to Dorn, the fawn calmed down following their brief reunion with Harley. By the end of the day, the baby and its mother had left once more. Dorn hasn’t seen the pair since, and she thinks the fawn was only a few days old. The former Marine Corps pilot is not surprised by Harley’s admirable deeds. Even as a puppy, “we could tell straight away, he had such a good heart,” adds Dorn. “He’s always been that way towards kids and animals. He adores every one of them.”