A juvenile cheetah cub with a spotted coat in an indoor enclosure with natural light coming through windows. 1:56
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Two cheetah cubs and their Labrador brothers

The plan for raising two cheetah cubs started with a pair of Labrador puppies. The dogs, the thinking went, would show the cats how to relax. more

First the cubs had to come home. The team brought two cheetahs back from San Diego. Before that, they worked with people at the Columbus Zoo, which runs a program that raises cheetahs with dogs, to learn what they were getting into.

A cheetah cub, mouth open, looks straight ahead while a person sits blurred in the background. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
One of the two cheetah cubs the team brought home from San Diego.

Labradors were an easy pick, because they're good-natured dogs. "They're just one big fuzzy heart," one of the team says.

They put all four animals together, and right away the cubs and puppies were playing like littermates. The idea was that the dog would calm the cheetah down. A young cheetah looks to the dog for cues, and if the dog is calm, all is well.

A black puppy walks indoors near a glass door, and another animal's tail shows nearby. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
The Labradors were there to show the young cats that all was well.

It still works that way. They play like that to this day and like each other's company, though the games are rougher now that the cubs are grown. At one point somebody ends up sitting on somebody else.

The dogs are Finn and Norton, and somebody is quick to defend them. "They're not fat. They're English Labradors. They're meant to be like that."

A juvenile cheetah cub with a spotted coat in an indoor enclosure with natural light coming through windows. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
The plan for raising two cheetah cubs started with a pair of Labrador puppies.

Cheetahs aren't terribly aggressive, so the team can work with them in ways they can't with other big cats. If you start when the cubs are very young, they bond with the people who care for them and with their dogs. Around then, one cheetah seems to wink at the camera.

That makes them, in the team's words, a great ambassador for their species. The goal is to reach as many people as possible. Picture a family having a great time at the zoo, turning a corner and finding a cheetah and a dog, with a keeper ready to talk about cheetahs. "They'll remember it forever."

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