A woman looking at her old house on Google Maps froze when she spotted a familiar face looking out from one of the downstairs windows.
In a poignant clip shared to TikTok under the handle j3nb33, the woman, Jen, says her heart stopped at the sight of Ice, her old dog.
“He was rescued initially, he was my first dog,” she told Newsweek. “He passed away a while ago, so it was quite surreal to see him in the window of our old house.”
The loss of a beloved pet can be hard to take and also difficult for those outside of the relationship to fully understand, according to Nadja Geipert, a marriage and family therapist.
“The specific reasons why it’s so painful to a particular person are unique to that person,” Geipert told the website PsychCentral. “There are things you feel about this cat, this dog, this bird, that no one else feels, which is true for all grief. Your relationship is completely unique, and your pet is completely irreplaceable in its unique qualities.”
Part of what makes the relationship between pet and owner so unique is the sense of attachment that forms.
“If we spend enough time [around] anyone or anything and there’s a bond, when it goes away it’s like somebody took your limbs away,” Geipert said. “At some point, our brain processes things as if they’re actually part of us. Like if you’re a tennis player, at some point your brain stops distinguishing between the racket and the arm.”
For Jen, seeing Ice again brought back so many memories of who he was and what he had meant to her.
“He was a Staffordshire bull terrier cross dogo argentino,” she said, recalling how he had a difficult start to life before being adopted. “I don’t have any information on his previous owners or how he was kept, but I just know they didn’t want him so we took him in.”
Along with the painful memories of his first few months, Jen recalled all the happy times they shared. “Ice loved a tummy rub, as all dogs do, and lying in the sun,” she said.
“We used to have to put sunscreen on his ears so they didn’t burn, with him being white and having short, fine hair,” she said.
She added with a laugh, “I also remember how he hated my singing.”
TikTok/j3nb33
Eager to share her experience with like-minded dog owners on social media, Jen posted a clip of what she found on Google Maps. The poignant post went viral, racking up over 230,000 views and counting.
“Wow heartbreaking and wonderful in one picture,” one user wrote. Another commented: “He’s waiting for you at the rainbow bridge.”
A third said: “That literally broke me,” with another adding, “I’m crying.”
One user shared a similarly powerful discovery.
“I lost my family dog four years ago and my grandad, two years ago. There they are, on Google Earth sat in his garden together,” the user wrote. “Time is the cruelest thing. But they’re always together in that moment.”
Another user suggested that the discovery was simply “a sign from him to let you know he’s always with you.”