A pet owner noticed that his dog was hanging out with the garbage man a lot. So, he decided to secretly film them. And that’s when he found out how the stranger was treating the animal.

Every time the garbage man pulled up, one man noticed that his dog would go running. The pet owner thought, then, that the animal’s behavior was somewhat unusual. So, he decided to secretly film the dog’s encounters with the stranger to see exactly what was happening.

Shelby the dog had a very worrying start in life. You see, the golden retriever was born in a kill shelter alongside her four sisters. Luckily for her, though, a loving family came to her rescue before the shelter could euthanize her.

Yes, Shelby’s new owner, Joshua Byrne, knew that she was the dog for him as soon as he set eyes on her. “I grew up in the country and we had many working dogs,” he explained on YouTube in 2015. “Goldens always seem to shine out as the the family dog.”

And just as Byrne had expected, it didn’t take long for Shelby to slot into the family. Before long, in fact, the dog had become the sunshine in all of their worlds. “She has been such a blessing in our lives since we got her,” Byrne confessed.

So, in many ways, Byrne’s life with Shelby was fairly plain sailing. However, in 2014, the dog’s owner noticed something unusual about his pet’s interactions with their garbage man. As a result, he set up a hidden camera to film the pair of them.

The device subsequently captured footage of the garbage man pulling up to Byrne’s home in his truck. It also showed the man getting out of the vehicle and walking towards the lawn. Up until this point, though, Byrne’s camera hadn’t picked up anything out of the ordinary. But then, something amazing happened.

Realizing that the garbage man had arrived, Shelby dashed towards him. As she did so, the man leant down towards her to give her a treat. Then, once the dog got close enough, he grabbed her with both his hands and started stroking her enthusiastically.

Clearly enjoying all the attention, Shelby brushed up against his legs and wagged her furry tail. But after a few moments, the dog decided that she’d had enough petting. Showing where her loyalty truly laid, the pooch then returned to the side of her onlooking owner. She didn’t stay there for long, though.

You see, as Byrne and the man started to chat, the dog returned to her admirer with a bone in her mouth. She then circled around his legs trying to get his attention once more. By this point, though, the man was engrossed in conversation with Byrne.

However, luckily for Shelby, the adorable encounter was unlikely to have been the last that she had with the garbage man. According to her owner, the pooch absolutely adores her new friend; and the feeling is mutual. What’s more, Byrne finds their friendship absolutely heartwarming, too.

In fact, he loved their encounters so much that he decided to share the footage he’d captured on YouTube. In the caption, moreover, he claimed that the way the guy behaved towards his dog had restored his faith in humanity. “Every week the garbage man takes time (two quality minutes) to see my pup and say hi,” he wrote. “Who said that nice people are hard to find?”

And it soon turned out that Byrne wasn’t the only one to find joy in Shelby and the garbage man’s relationship. Since the video went live in 2014, in fact, more than seven million people have viewed it. Moreover, many of them left swooning messages about the adorable friendship in the comment section.

“The garbage man is happy, the dog is happy, the owner of the dog is happy and we who love this video are happy too,” wrote one user. Meanwhile, another added, “Love this positive energy! Smiles, laughter and happy music. Too bad not all people on earth can have this.”

Elsewhere, other users relayed stories of their pets and the strangers they’d come to love. “My dog loves the delivery people but especially our mailman,” one person said. “All it took was one package from Amazon that had her Kong squeaky balls in it (she could smell the balls through the packaging) and it was love.”

“Now she climbs up onto the steps of his mail van and puts her head in his lap,” the user continued. “If we’re walking out on the road when a USPS van drives by she’s looking for a certain driver. My dog was adopted also.”

It seems, then, that our pets have a lot of affection to go round. And Shelby was no different. In 2017, Byrne returned to YouTube to reveal that the dog had a new love in her life – his baby daughter. “My Golden is back with our new addition to the family, and they both love each other,” he announced on the video sharing site.

“Every morning my two little pups take a few moments to just love each other in their own little way,” he added in the description of the video, which opens with Shelby and the baby sitting on a bed. As the little girl mumbles, the dog sits protectively by her side.

Then, in another shot, the dog tentatively sniffs around the infant’s face. The sniffing soon escalates into a full-on licking session, which appears to delight and repulse the gurgling kiddie in equal measure. In her dad’s lovingly shot video, the little girl can be seen giggling before trying to halt her furry friend’s advances.

But she doesn’t resist Shelby’s love for long. Indeed, later on in the footage the baby gently caresses the dog’s face. And even when the youngster’s actions grow more rough, the patient pet simply sits there, enjoying her best friend’s company.

When you consider how much love Shelby has to give, it doesn’t bear thinking about what may have happened to her if no one had rescued her. Thanks to Byrne, though, the dog has brought endless joy to the people in her life – and with the help of YouTube, millions more around the globe, too.