An adorable friendship is blossoming between a toddler and a dog, despite the backyard fence that stands between them.
Video that Chad Nelson shared to Twitter this week shows his 2-year-old son Conway playing fetch over the wooden barrier with a Labrador called Dozer.
Conway twice throws a ball over the fence in the clip. Each time, Dozer picks up the ball in his mouth and drops it back over the fence so the game can begin again.
“It was just a cute thing,” Nelson told KARE 11, where he works as a photojournalist. “We just thought Conway was being cute and our friends would like it and all of sudden it’s being shared to thousands of people.”
By early Friday, the clip had garnered more than 10.3 million views.
Nelson’s friend Erin Richter shot the footage at her home in Savage, Minnesota, as Chad’s wife was visiting with Conway. Richter’s son, Landon, often enjoys playing the same game with Dozer, who lives in the neighboring house, until “the ball gets full of slobber,” she told BuzzFeed.
Nelson revealed in a further tweet how the 20 seconds featured in the clip was just a fraction of the playtime:
He also said his family has two dogs. Sadly for his son, they “don’t play fetch though.” Unsurprisingly, the clip has gone down well with fellow Twitter users:
“We are just happy people found some joy in our son’s experience with the dog, Nelson told HuffPost via email on Saturday.
“Our son is only 2 and isn’t allowed screen time, so he doesn’t know or understand anything about the video going viral,” he added. “But he does keep talking about ‘Dozer Dog’ so we are glad that is the experience he had.”
This story has been updated with comment from Nelson.