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Yes, what you are looking at is actually a real picture. It's an older story that went viral online just a few weeks ago, and people's first reaction was not believing that it's real. But it is, and we think this is one of those stories that is worth revisiting. It happened at a southeast Kansas zoo in the Safari Zoological Park - a golden retriever dog adopted three rare white tiger cubs.
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The cubs, unfortunately, were abandoned by their mother. She's in the zoo too, alive and well, but as Tom Harvey, the park's owner, explained at the time, the mother had problems with them. According to the LA Times, a day after the cubs were born, the mother stopped caring for them. The cubs were wondering around, looking for their mother, and she simply did not pay attention to them. That is when the cubs were put in the care of a golden retriever named Isabella.
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Of course, it's unusual for dogs to take care of tigers, and Harvey concedes that, but it does happen. Puppies take about the same amount of time as tigers do to develop, and the momma dog had recently weaned her own puppies. “The timing couldn’t have been any better,” he said.
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The mother pup seems to not see the difference between these pups and her other ones. She licks them, cleans them, and even lets them nurse on her, feeding them. They needed her, and she was very happy to be there for them as well.
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This situation cannot last forever, of course, and eventually, about a year after being put together, the cubs had to say goodbye to their adoptive momma. But it was a good year. “They love Isabella,” Allie Harvey said to Today. “They love to play with Sandy the puppy more than they do Isabella. Izzy just kind of supervises everything," talking about Isabella's biological puppy.
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