Nine-month-old Sam Giovanini of Cedar Hills, Utah, couldn’t manage to say the word, “Mama,” even though he was prompted with a yummy food treat by his mom, Andrea.
“That week he had been saying ‘Dada’ a lot, and so we were trying really hard to coax him to say ‘Mama,’” Andrea told KSL.
The baby may have been speechless, but Patches, the family’s 10-year-old Miniature Australian Shepherd, had no problem showing little Sam exactly how to say the word.
Patches had been trained to say “Mama” when he was about 2 years old, so naturally he thought the treat Andrea was offering was for him, not Sam.
A home video of Patches “stealing the show (but not the food) with his ability to speak” was posted on YouTube June 30. It’s gone viral, with more than 1.7 million views.
[Aug. 7 Update: The video is now private for some reason — perhaps because some people left negative comments complaining that making Patches wait for a reward was kind of cruel.]
Rest assured that Patches did indeed get that treat he’d assumed was for him, as a subsequent video shows.
Patches isn’t the only dog who’s been seen helping a baby in a viral video. A Border Collie named Dakota showed a baby how to jump. And when another baby crawled for the very first time, the family’s big, black Lab gave her a sweet little reward.
Photo via YouTube