Internet viewers have been awed by a dog “manipulating” his owners into giving him a treat as he cried real tears while begging.
Bruno the boxer dog is 6 years old, and has been with his owner, Hannah Fouts, 26, since he was 5 months old, when she rescued him and they became “inseparable.”
“He has gone to college with me, moved to a new state with me, and everything in
between,” Fouts, originally from Pennsylvania but now living in North Carolina, told Newsweek.
Having such a close bond with her dog would already make it difficult for Fouts to say no to him—but he has a special quirk that makes it practically impossible not to give him what he wants.
That quirk? Bruno cries when he is begging for food.
“His hobbies include staring into your soul when you open the fridge; giving side-eye that deserves its own Oscar; and, of course, his excellent tear performance,” Fouts said.
And this performance has gone viral, after Fouts shared a clip to her TikTok account @bruntheboxer on July 2 showing Bruno begging for a slice of banana—with tears leaking from his eyes.
In the video, viewed more than 11.5 million times, a man eats a banana while Bruno stands beside him, giving puppy-dog eyes. And as he licks his lips and stares at the treat, tears come rolling down his cheeks—until, finally, Bruno is given a piece of banana.
“How are we supposed to say no when he literally cries,” Fouts wrote over the video, adding in the caption: “He was gonna get a piece either way but the tears really sold it.”
TikTok users had a huge reaction to the clip, liking it more than 2.3 million times, as one described it as the “manipulation final boss.”
“I’ve never seen a dog actually cry … he’d get his way every time with me,” another posted, as a third commented: “I didn’t know dogs could do that omg [oh my God].”
Many concerned commenters urged Fouts to take Bruno to the vet; one wrote, “it’s a result of an eye infection or something else,” and another added: “He has an eye infection. Dogs do not cry.”
And as Fouts told Newsweek, Bruno’s heart-renching tears are, in fact, the result of an unusual condition, having been diagnosed with Keratoconjunctivitis sicca (KCS), also known as dry eye.
KCS causes decreased tear production in dogs. Tears are needed for lubrication, comfort and health of a dog’s eyes, and symptoms of KCS can range from redness and swelling to vision impairment and blindness, according to a vet-reviewed report from PetMD.
Fouts tried every medication available, but when nothing worked, Bruno underwent a surgery that rerouted part of his saliva gland into his eyes, “to work as a natural substitute for tears to keep the eyes moist.”
The surgery worked, but it came with an interesting side effect: “When he smells food, his saliva glands start working really well, causing him to produce a lot of saliva and ‘cry’ tears,” Fouts said.
This is an expected side effect of the surgery, but, in Bruno’s case, things got even stranger—if he gets excited or hungry, he would produce so much saliva in his eyes that he would temporarily lose his sight.
“After he settles down, he gets his vision back, but he has run into a fair amount of walls and accidentally walked into many pools,” Fouts said. She added that he “belongs in the vet textbooks” because it appears this side effect is uniquely Bruno’s.
As Fouts put it: “Long story short, he took puppy eyes to a whole other level!”
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