When Josh and Kelly Rheaume brought their newborn twins home earlier this year, they weren't sure how their dog of almost seven years, Lucy, would react.
The two rescued Lucy when they were just dating and say that the dog has "always been a daughter to us."
So when they welcomed their first human children, twin girls Lily and Lennon, Lucy was understandably a little suspicious at first.
“She was confused,” Josh tells TODAY.com. “For about five, six days, she was very standoffish... She tried to go in the car seat...trying to take their place so she could get our attention again. It was quite sad actually.”
But soon she came around and quickly fell in love with the girls.
“We learned pretty quickly that what we had to do was include her in as much as we could,” Josh says. “With all the tricks that I had trained Lucy over the years, we figured that we could put them into action.”
The Rheaumes initially adopted Lucy during a rough patch for Josh. He tells TODAY.com that their previous dog had died six months earlier and he'd recently lost his job.
"I said, 'You know what? I don't have a job right now. I need something to keep me company,'" he explains. He started training Lucy to do tricks and fetch things around the house.
Then, when they brought the twins home, they decided to include her in helping around the house. Instead of Lucy’s original “party trick” of fetching a beer can from the fridge, they taught her to get a milk bottle and so on, Josh says.
“The thing about Lucy (is) she has very good item recognition and word association,” he explains. “(It’s) something that’s kind of imprinted in her brain.”
He says he isn't entirely sure how she does it, but she was “relatively easy” to train.
He decided to share Lucy's skills on TikTok and immediately the videos took off. Lucy's tricks have made their way onto headlines around the world and amassed millions of views across the internet — a far cry from her hometown of Capreal, Ontario — a small town 272 miles north of Toronto, Canada.
Josh says Lucy now gets recognized and petted all over town.
"When we go out, I always have the window down and I always leave the truck running," he says with a laugh. "I'll come (back) over and she'll have five or six people around her giving her treats and giving her hugs."
He adds they've had neighbors stop by to give her toys and treats too.
"I found a tennis ball down in my driveway last night and part of me knows that someone probably just left it there for her," he says, chuckling.
For anyone hoping to train their own dogs to be as helpful as Lucy, Josh says he recommends “patience and positive reinforcement.”
“A bond is really important, being close to your dog first and foremost. They want to do well for us,” he adds. “Give them the patience they need and, you know, reinforcing that positivity once they’re able to achieve what you want them to achieve.”
