A Golden Retriever Shares His Toy With Mom — And Quietly Reveals What Empathy Looks Like

Everyone eventually receives a certain type of online video. It originates from a group chat that frequently features sports memes, a sister, and a coworker. “You have to watch this” is the only thing stated in the message. Recently, there has been a 12-second video of Finn, a Golden Retriever, stealthily approaching a bathtub while clutching a slightly moist apple core plush toy. His mom is submerged. He isn’t. He gives her the toy because, in his world, that’s what you do when someone is going to get wet.

The Instagram account @goldengirl_xena shared the video, and the on-screen caption, “What do you mean he goes looking for a toy to bring me when I’m in the bath, because toys comforts him when HE’s having a bath,” reads almost like a confession from the owner. The spelling is incorrect. No editing flourish is present. Everyone appears a little worn out due to the flat overhead bathroom lighting. However, the video has accomplished something that very few online content pieces do these days: it has genuinely traversed a culture that has largely grown resistant to sincerity.

It’s not really the cuteness of Finn’s behavior that makes it fascinating. The implied cognition is what it is. In some way, the dog has projected his own emotional reaction to bath time onto a beloved animal and concluded that what benefits him ought to benefit her. The answer to the question of whether dogs have empathy is more complicated than most pet owners would like. Animal behaviorists have been writing about this topic for years. Dogs have been shown to react to human distress. There isn’t as much proof that they comprehend it as we do. Finn is not a researcher. He is merely a Golden Retriever with a plush apple core. However, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that he keeps doing this and that the toys are constantly changing—one week it’s a stuffed apple, the next it’s something with a holiday theme, and occasionally it’s a tiny plush of an unknown species.

A few months prior, The Dodo created a longer profile of him, which has received over 651,000 views. In it, Lucy, his owner, explained that he had been so disruptive during her baths—bringing in random objects, dropping them by the pool, and then standing there waiting—that she finally got him his own little tub. For me, it’s that particular detail. A fully grown Golden Retriever lying in a small tub beside his human, both of them solemnly attending to bath time together, seems like the kind of subdued domestic absurdity that you’d never script but instantly recognize.

In this area of the internet, Finn is not alone either. At about the same time that his video was going viral, Moose, another Golden Retriever, was going viral for the opposite emotional register: he was having an hour-long tantrum because his mother had purchased a Stitch plush toy that, sadly, was intended for someone else. He made a swipe at the bag. He complained. He gave the puppy face a try. The majority of the comments on the video were in favor of Moose. These videos give the impression that Golden Retrievers, more than practically any other breed, currently occupy an odd cultural niche. In a year when there hasn’t been much of it elsewhere, they have taken on the role of avatars for a simple emotional generosity that people seem to be searching for.

Naturally, the skeptical reader believes that this is just clever editing and parasocial dog content—the same engagement machine that has been devouring pet videos since Vine. Perhaps. However, something is happening there that isn’t totally fake when you watch Finn carry that apple core toward the tub with his ears slightly back and his tail moving in that slow Golden Retriever manner that suggests real concentration rather than excitement. The gesture itself is genuine, regardless of whether he comprehends what he’s doing the way we want him to or if he’s simply repeating a learned behavior loop. He brought the toy to her. She didn’t inquire. He simply made up his mind.

When you scroll through these videos late at night, you get the impression that part of the reason they go viral is that they provide something that the majority of the feed doesn’t. No disagreement. Not a pitch. There is nothing to conclude. Just a dog walking cautiously across a bathroom floor with a tiny green and white apple in his mouth, thinking that his mother might need consolation.