A big fluffy white dog has become a huge celebrity at McGill University.
Confiture the Great Pyrenees is nine years old, and he’s developed a special relationship with students there.
Jean Snow and his wife Yuko Fujiwara share their downtown Montreal apartment with the gentle giant. But Snow works, Fujiwara studies, and inevitably they have to leave him home alone. Confiture gets very lonely.
“He has separation anxiety,” Jean Snow told Global News. “Unfortunately, when he’s left alone, he doesn’t like it very much. The fact he’s so big and so strong means he tries to escape wherever he is to find us, so it causes a lot of destruction.”
With the McGill University campus just a few blocks away, they came up with a solution.
“It was my wife’s idea. She decided, ‘Why don’t I go make flyers and I’ll go to the campus and hand them out and see if students want to help out and take him for walks?'” Snow explained.
Dozens of McGill students wanted to come walk Confiture, and the couple created a Facebook group to get things organized.
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“Every Sunday night, I put up a post saying, ‘Hey! Who wants to spend time with Confiture this week?'” Snow said.
Now, the couple sometimes has to say no to people, so their dog doesn’t get walked too much.
“What started with a hundred people, now we have close to 2,000 people,” he said.
On Thursday, two dental students came to pick Confiture up for a walk.
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“We’ve been in school since September, so it’s really nice to have a break,” said student Iwona Fugariu.
Being big and strong, he gave the two women a challenge. Within minutes of beginning their walk, Confiture was recognized by other students on the street.
“Confiture has become the big McGill support dog,” Snow said.
The majestic beast melts hearts and helps people every day just by walking around.