A Great Dane and a Fawn: the Friendship of Kate and Pippin (Video)
A big black dog made friends with a fawn. You’d think a dog is a predator and a deer is prey, but watch the video — it’s amazing.
This isn’t staged: Kate the Great Dane and Pippin the fawn lived in the same home, and they were filmed by Kate’s owner, photographer Isobel Springett.
How they became friends
The fawn had been abandoned by her mother. Isobel rescued the little one, named her Pippin and placed her next to Kate. The Great Dane had never had puppies of her own, but she started looking after the fawn like a mother right away.
Pippin was bottle-fed sheep’s milk, and Kate stayed close by: they played and rested together. Later the fawn grew up and began wandering farther from the house, but the friendship didn’t end there — in the video Pippin is already grown, and the two still romp and snuggle together.
A book about Kate and Pippin
Isobel photographed the pair for more than two years. Her photos became a children’s book, “Kate & Pippin: An Unlikely Love Story” (Henry Holt, 2012): the text was written by Isobel’s brother, Martin Springett, and the photographs are hers.
It’s so touching to see animals cuddle like this.