A dog’s willingness to help out with garden chores has been widely praised after a video capturing his hard work was shared online.
In the TikTok video shared by user bayleeluxtodd, the Australian cattle dog Friday could be seen helping out with some garden chores.
The TikTok user could be seen in the clip struggling to get weeds out from the ground. The user then asks Friday to dig up the weeds by pointing to it.
Friday, described in the video as “the goodest boy,” then gets to work and digs under the troublesome weed before taking a chomp out of the Earth to get the job done. With the weed out of the ground, Friday is seen continuing to dig further into the lawn.
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The TikTok video was captioned: “Natural, organic weed solution. Just get yourself a herding dog.”
Joe Nutkins, a dog training instructor and co-director at Dog Training for Essex and Suffolk in the U.K., told Newsweek that digging is an activity canines love.
She said: “Digging is something some dogs love to do, and it can be beneficial for some dogs, in moderation, to help with their strength and fitness. But, for some dogs, it can lead to soreness where they rely on their hips, lower back, rear legs, etc. to support them.
“For the weeding part, in this video, the dog is shown what to pull, and he does this on cue rather than manically grabbing the ground and catching the weed by accident, which I would say is a safer game for the dog than grabbing everything.
“The dog holds the weed clump and pulls it smoothly, then hands it to the owner and is happy with this so it doesn’t look like the dog will then go around the garden pulling up all weeds and flowers but did it for the praise from the owner.”
But Nutkins offered some words of caution for dog owners whose pets end up eating grass and other plants.
She said: “If the dog was trying to bite and grab more of the turf, I would be concerned that the dog would be excited about pulling up everything from the garden, including bulbs. Bulbs can be very toxic for dogs to eat or swallow! So a dog that already likes to pull up weeds and flowers could potentially make themselves unwell if this is encouraged.”
The expert warned that weed killers or pesticides used in the garden can also cause a range of side effects in dogs: vomiting, diarrhea, or seizures.
“The same concern would [apply to] slug pellets, newly planted flowers that may have feed in the soil, etc. When it is plain soil and a young weed without thorns and pollen, the risk is very low. When it’s daffodil bulbs, lily pollen, or tulip stems involved, we really don’t want our dogs to be trying to help us.”
Since being shared on June 6, the video has been viewed more than 2.1 million times and liked on an estimated 198,600 occasions.
The majority of people who commented on the video were left stunned and pleasantly bemused by what they had seen.
TikTok user brooklyn said: “I absolutely did not expect the big bite he just took out of the ground.” Alexandria Frakes wrote: “I wasn’t expecting him to bite it.”
Anna Elise commented: “My dog does this. Never seen another dog who does.”
Newsweek has contacted bayleeluxtodd for comment via TikTok.
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