A light brown adult Labrador Retriever with a dark brown kitten nestled against its front leg, indoors on tiled flooring. 3:41

The Labrador who raised a baby wild boar

One morning Dora's gardener showed up at the house with a box. Inside was a wild boar only a couple of hours old, no bigger than a phone. more

Dora named her Yehzu. The family searched everywhere for the mother, but it looked like the baby had been abandoned. No wildlife rescue in Sri Lanka takes wild boars, and Dora couldn't leave her alone, so she called a friend who is a vet and got to work.

Dora already had several dogs, and Yehzu chose one right away. She threw her whole 2-pound body straight into the mouth of Biu Biu, the family's Labrador, and then she kept doing it. He let her. "I've never seen anything like it," Dora says.

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Out of all the dogs in the house, the tiny boar heads straight for Biu Biu.

From then on he was her teacher. Yehzu started eating solid food because she saw Biu Biu eat it, and he always let her go first at his own bowl. When she swam in the pool, he kept watch.

He showed her how dogs play, too. Dora thinks Yehzu missed her mom, so Biu Biu became her whole world.

A light brown adult Labrador Retriever with a dark brown kitten nestled against its front leg, indoors on tiled flooring. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
One morning Dora's gardener showed up at the house with a box.

He seems to enjoy being a dad. Not every dog in the house looks so sure about it, though. Another family dog is often nearby, wearing the look of the only one who knows Yehzu isn't a dog.

When Yehzu was small, Biu Biu's favorite thing was to use her as a pillow. Once she got big enough, the deal flipped. Now he's her pillow, and often she just sits on him like he is a chair. He was always gentle and patient with her, and Dora is proud of him for it.

A dog with a light-colored collar rests his head on another animal's back near a window. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
While Yehzu is still small, the Lab likes to rest his head on her.

The two still follow each other around. "Where there is one, there's the other," Dora says. A year after she showed up in her box, Yehzu has gone from 2 pounds to 62.

She is family now and lives at home, with a boar condo of her own outside for a little freedom. She can't go back to the wild, because boars are seen as pests in Sri Lanka and can be hunted all year long. Yehzu is in her teenage phase these days, but she still sees Biu Biu as her dad and leans on him for comfort.

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