A golden retriever named Noodle’s fascination with two humpback whales made for a “very magical moment,” according to his owner.
Lauren Read, who lives in the Vancouver area, adopted the canine in January after seeing him on a rescue organization’s Facebook page. This summer marked Noodle’s first visit to the Read family cabin on Nelson Island in British Columbia.
Lauren Read
In a video Readposted on InstagramSept. 15, Noodle spots the two whales from the shoreline near the cabin and jumps into the water to swim closer to the action.
“Two humpbacks, one Noodle,” reads the caption on the video, which has more than 6,000 likes.
Read’s family has been spending time at the cabin her whole life — her dad has owned the property for 40 years — but she had never seen humpbacks, so she tells PEOPLE it was “a pretty exciting moment.”
“They were coming in closer, and I said to my boyfriend, ‘You don’t think he’d go in?'” she says. “And of course, he’s like, ‘No, no, no, of course not.’ And then Noodle goes in almost immediately after that. So we were just a little concerned. We didn’t know how far he would swim. But they were humpbacks, not orcas, so I was a little more comfortable with that.”
Read says the interaction was “just really special” to witness.
“It felt like a very magical moment,” she says. “I knew this was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime type of thing to happen.”
“I think he’s just experiencing the world and trying to figure out where he stands,” Read says. “He’s still learning a lot. I think he was just interested in seeing what they were all about.”
When Read initially posted the video on Instagram, it was primarily friends and family commenting on it, but she later sent it to the Vancouver news outlet Daily Hive at the suggestion of a friend.
“It’s kind of fun to see all the people commenting and liking and sharing it,” she says. “I’ve just been excited to share the moment with others and see the attention it’s been getting.”
source: people.com
