As it turns out, a dog and a cheetah CAN be BFFs

Since she was only seven weeks old, 1-year-old cheetah Adaeze has been BFFs with 6-year-old Australian shepherd Odie. The two live together at the Leo Zoological Center in Greenwich, Connecticut, and, as their people tell it, the two are inseparable.

“Adaeze is our animal ambassador bringing awareness about the plight of the cheetah. Odie gives her the comfort by being with her to be relaxed for presentations. He helps her process the change better than a wild animal is programmed to do,” Marcella Leone, founder of the Leo Center, told ABC News.

So, in case you’re wondering if this friendship happened by chance, it most definitely did not. It was Leone, in fact, who was dead-set on getting Adaeze a dog for a BFF.

“I wanted Adaeze to bond with a dog because she would need an outlet for play and studies have shown that calm dogs can help tame cheetahs–especially at stressful public events when the dog is at ease,” Leone explained.

As Leone tells it, they are “best friends who love each other,” and “are inseparable and sleep together at night.” In fact, they’re only separated for meal times, but even that’s for a really cute reason. If they eat together, Odie gobbles down his food and then Adaeze totally lets her BFF have the rest of her meal, too. Sharing food, such a BFF move.

In fact, Odie has done such a good job of calming Adaeze down that sometimes during presentations, Adaeze does a better job of obeying commands than her canine pal. In other words, when asked to sit, Odie runs around like a maniac and Adaeze sits like a good girl).

So you’re probably thinking at this point “Okay, but there better be a cute video of the two of them at the end of all this.”

Don’t worry, there is, here’s a vid of the two playing tug-of-war, enjoy.

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