Olivia Myers, 7, was caught committing a crime of the heart: temporarily dognapping her neighbor’s pooch.
Amanda Sullivan of Glouchester, Massachusetts, caught the entire act on her outdoor camera and shared it on TikTok.
When Sullivan saw the movement notification on her phone, she immediately opened the live video on her phone. Instead of stopping the not-at-all-vicious act, she watched while Olivia (who she describes as “quite sassy,” “hilarious” and “too smart for her own good”) stole her dog and left a replacement.
In the video, Gunnar, Sullivan’s 11-year-old husky, was minding his own business when Olivia walked boldly into the backyard. She knelt in front of him and calmly swapped his collar (which read “Mama’s Boy”) with a collar she had made for him (which read “Olivia’s Boy”). She also placed a large stuffed husky dog on the ground in Gunnar’s place.
Maybe nobody would notice.
Running out of the yard, Olivia beckoned Gunnar to follow. The dog paused, looking back to the house several times to see if his owner would step outside or signal approval. He ultimately followed Olivia to her house.
Sullivan says she let a few moments go by so that Olivia could feel victorious, but she eventually heads down the street to confront the budding thief.
“I can’t say that you can call it ‘stealing’ when he goes willingly,” laughs Sullivan.
Funnily enough, Olivia has her own dog — a 6-year-old English bulldog named Lincoln — but she has room in her heart for more. Olivia and Gunnar have had a close relationship since they met two years ago.
Gunnar had been acting as Sullivan’s my cardiac alert and mobility service dog, but his work came to an abrupt halt when he suffered a spinal cord stroke. He is 85% recovered now, according to Sullivan, but still has occasional seizures. In the meantime, Sullivan’s other two dogs — Gunnar’s siblings — died within two months of one another. Gunnar took the losses hard and had a tough time adjusting to his new, more solitary, life.
“He was a bit doggy depressed,” says Sullivan.
To shake up his routine, Sullivan started walking him through a different route in the neighborhood and discovered the Myers family, who lives three houses away. Gunnar and his second grade buddy “fell in love the minute they met,” Sullivan says.
TODAY.com didn’t have an opportunity to speak to Olivia because she has been a bit under the weather, but her mother Nikki Myers says that her daughter is “a very outgoing little girl. She loves making new friends wherever she goes.” And Olivia’s brother, 13-year-old Cayden Myers, loves Gunnar as much as Olivia does. Both of them had been collecting husky stuffed animals years before meeting Gunnar.
Sullivan describes Gunnar and Olivia as “two peas in a pod.” When Gunnar starts howling, Sullivan knows that she has about 15 minutes to get Gunnar to the bus stop to greet Olivia when she comes home from school. And Olivia is welcome in Sullivan’s backyard any time.
“I actually put a wireless doorbell on the back fence so that she can just come right up to the fence and ring the doorbell and let us know she’s here,” Sullivan says. “Gunnar knows the difference between his doorbell and the regular doorbell for the house.”
Gunnar will also behave differently for Olivia than he will for Sullivan. “He’ll eat stuff for her that he refuses to eat for me,” Sullivan laughs. Gunnar would refuse to eat a strawberry when Sullivan offered it, for example, but when Olivia gave Gunnar a strawberry, she says, “Lo and behold, he ate it! You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Both Sullivan and Gunnar seem thrilled that the Myers family has entered their lives, even if they have to work out some compromises … including deciding who Gunnar actually belongs to.
“At this point, I’ve accepted that we have shared custody of Gunnar,” says Sullivan.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
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