Recently the dog in the picture stunned the world, after exhibiting an unusual feeling of empathy for its owner.
The person who posted his picture is none other than his owner – 53-year-old Russell Jones, who broke his ankle a few weeks ago while working on a shop window.
In an interview with a UK news network, Jones said he recently noticed that Billy, his nine-year-old beloved dog, was lame in one leg.
“At first I did not understand why,” he recalls. “I had some suspicion that he was repeating a behavior we had seen in his past, when my wife Michelle stretched a back muscle, and had to spend many days in bed. When that happened, Billy used to lie next to her in bed and not move away, for whole days.”
Jones said that when he delved into this, Billy realized that he was actually ‘imitating’ his husband’s behavior, and ‘lame’ not because he was really hurt in the leg, but because he wanted to show a sense of identification with his owner. I paid £ 300 for an X-ray, which in the end turned out to have nothing. “Billy is lame just to send me a message that he cares about how I feel,” Jones was surprised.
“Because of the injury, I had to walk with crutches for seven weeks, and that was probably long enough for Billy to learn to mimic me.” And it is amazing to us that he is able to feel my pain in this way, “he concludes.