Hero Golden Retriever Saves Baby Koala And Brings It Home!

Australia is one of the most interesting places on earth, especially when it comes to wildlife. Things got even stranger than usual, though, in Strathdownie, Western Victoria this last winter when Asha, a gorgeous Golden Retriever decided to bring home a new, unexpected, friend; a baby koala!

Kerry McKinnon, Asha’s human, couldn’t help but explode with laughter when her husband called her out to the porch to have a look at the surprise their Golden Retriever brought them.

“It was quite early in the morning, and my husband yelled out to me to come have a look at something. I didn’t know what he was talking about at first, but then I saw this tiny baby koala snuggled on top of Asha,” Kerry recalls in an interview with News.com.au.

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“I just burst out laughing. Poor Asha didn’t know what to think; she just kept looking at me with such a confused look,” Kerry remembers. “She looked a bit guilty when I came out to see what was going on. Her expression was hilarious,” she adds.

While the appearance of a baby koala cuddled up in the fur of her Golden Retriever at first shocked Kerry, when she began to think about how it came to happen it started to make sense. The temperatures that time of year in Kerry’s region can drop to a near-freezing 41F, and with the small baby koala left outside of its mother’s pouch, it was probably just searching for the warmest place the poor thing could find!

Source: People's Daily, China/Facebook

From the looks of things, it appeared that Kerry’s Golden Retriever was totally content to let the baby koala hang out all bundled up in his fur coat.

“She [Asha] kept looking back at the koala bear, but she wasn’t trying to get him off her or anything. She was happy to let him snuggle into her,” Kerry said.

While no one actually knows the full story of how Asha came to have the adorable koala wrapped up in her long locks of fur, Kerry feels that the most reasonable explanation is that the baby koala, who was still young enough to be in his mama’s pouch, must have gotten lost or somehow separated from her when he stumbled upon Asha in her warm bed.

“I think the koala bear baby fell out of his mum’s pouch and didn’t know what to do. He would have just wandered over to our back porch and seen the dogs in their beds, then decided to snuggle in Asha’s fur because it’s nice and warm,” she speculates.

Source: People's Daily, China/Facebook

With temperatures as low as they were at the time the baby koala crawled onto Asha’s back, and as young as the poor thing is, Kerry believes that if it hadn’t been for her dog, there is no way that the little joey would have survived.

“Asha definitely saved the koala’s life by keeping him warm. He would have died out there if left alone all night. The poor thing could have been taken by a fox or something too,” Kerry said.

Once the joey had attached himself to the Golden Retriever’s back though, he wasn’t willing to leave his new best friend.

“I think dogs have that protective instinct. The koala didn’t want to leave Asha’s back. When we took the koala off to wrap it in a blanket, it hissed at me and carried on,” Kerry remembers trying to extricate the little guy from Asha’a fur.

Source: People's Daily, China/Facebook

After Kerry was finally able to disentangle the baby koala from her Golden Retriever’s back, she wrapped it up in a cozy blanket and drove him to the vet to make sure he would be okay.

The vet checked the joey out and determined he was still too young yet to be able to survive on his own in the wild, and so they called a local rescuer who took the koala back to an animal rehabilitation center until they can confidently set him free again.

Source: People's Daily, China/Facebook

Needless to say, Kerry is incredibly proud of Asha and her kind, compassionate nature. More than that, though, the doting dog-mom just feels lucky to live where she does and is completely awe-struck by the inter-species friendships she gets to play witness to.

“I think it would have been happy to have just slept there all day. It was really an amazing animal friendship to see and so uniquely Australian.”

We hope everyone can take a page out of Asha’s book and just learn to love each other!

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