When Emily and Justin Thomas and their dog, Pax, moved into their new house in October of 2020, Pax was so pleased to have a wide yard to run around in and fantastic new neighbors to meet. Then the neighbors welcomed home a puppy named Penny — and for Pax, it was love at first sight.

“When Pax and Penny met in March of2021, she was only approximately 3 months old, but even then they played well together,” Emily Thomas told The Dodo. “Our neighbors decided to fence their yard too, and they put in a gate at the rear so we would be prepared for playdates! Pax started looking for her every time he went outside, and as soon as she could reach the top of the fence, we would peek out the window to watch them greeting one other and ‘kissing’ over it every day.”

Ever since then, Pax and Penny greet each other and share kisses across the fence every single time they’re both outside. They adore exchanging toys over the fence too, and have even played tug-of-war over the fence together with a rope toy. Their parents make care to bring them together for playdates all the time in their own yards. Nothing could ever keep them apart–until it started snowing.

“While Pax loves the snow and will sleep outside in a mound of it as long as we’ll allow him, Penny is not a lover of snow or rain,” Thomas added. “When we had a lot of snow in the last several weeks, she was not delighted and didn’t really want to go outside. We spotted him standing at the fence a lot, peering at their back door, clearly missing her.”

Poor Pax was devastated that Penny wasn’t there to welcome him every day as usual. He didn’t understand why he and his best buddy suddenly had to be separated. Penny’s parents could see how miserable Pax was being apart from her— so they came up with a plan to do something about it.

They decided to try shoveling Penny a path from her house to the fence to maybe make her feel more comfortable walking out into the snow. She was cautious at first, but she did it for Pax — until finally, she made it back up to her customary location and was at long last reunited with her closest buddy.

Once Penny was able to see that Pax was OK with being in the snow, she suddenly became OK with it too. He helped her conquer all of her concerns, and now the duo never needs to be kept apart like way ever again.

“They were really eager to see each other, and once she had Pax to encourage her, she jumped right in,” Thomas added. “They’ve had play dates in the snow virtually every day since!”