Loubie’s continuous grasps really began with hand-holding, which is another conduct she got from people. The canine’s PDAs began around Valentine’s Day in 2014, when the delicate little guy understood that Fernandez-Chavez, who was experiencing a separation, no longer had somebody to hold his hand.
“She started sitting up and grabbing my hands with both of her paws and then crossing the other paw over her paw,” Fernandez-Chavez stated. “I remember joking with my friends, ‘At least I have someone to hold hands with during Valentine’s.’”
Clasping hands immediately turned into Loubie’s new most loved side interest during her walks — and immediately charmed even the most tainted New Yorkers. “From then on, every walk, she wanted to hold hands,” Loubie’s owner recalled. “She would just sit up and cross her paw over the other, and look around like a lady. People passing by were like, ‘Oh my god, she’s so cute.’”
At that point, one day, Loubie out of nowhere concluded that she might want to embrace. “Instead of asking me to do the holding hands thing, she just sat up, very close to my legs, and she’d wrap her legs around my knees,” Fernandez-Chavez said. “I thought, ‘This is weird. What’s going on?’ But I let her do it.”
In a little while Loubie was embracing neighbors and outsiders she met on her strolls. “We’d run into neighbors that she knew,” Fernandez-Chavez said, “and instead of just leaning on them, she started hugging them, and then random people who would come to us.” Before long, the lovely little guy was a nearby big name with many articles, TV appearances, and even another nickname: The Hugging Dog of Instagram.
However, Loubie won’t embrace only anyone, as indicated by her owner. “Sometimes people run up and ask for a hug, but I tell them, ‘I don’t think it’s going to happen,’ because she has to bond with that person first,” he said. “But when she sits next to someone, then I say, ‘You’re probably going to get a hug.’”
Sadly, the puppy’s lovely routine came to a halt in 2017, when a fire decimated their Chelsea high rise, leaving Fernandez-Chavez and his canine briefly homeless. The pair had been out on a stroll at that point. However, they lost everything in the blast.
“I was going to leave Loubie [at home]. If I did that, Louboutina would be gone now,” Loubie’s troubled proprietor told The New York Post, reviewing his pivotal choice to take the canine for a walk minutes before fire ravaged the structure. They’d just made it one square before the structure ejected on fire.
Loublie was shaken by the episode — to such an extent that she suddenly stopped embracing. Presently the 7-year-old pooch invested her energy barking and pacing – both exemplary indications of dog uneasiness – and appeared to be particularly upset whenever she approached the singed fabricating where she’d lived with her human for as far back as 6 years.
However, Loubie’s developing fan base — which now included almost 200,000 Instagram followers —mobilized to help when they heard what had occurred. Someone made a GoFundMe page that at last raised $76,000, permitting Fernandez-Chavez and Loubie to locate another condo. In the meantime, neighbors and fans kept on drawing closer Loubie in the road for embraces. The damaged pooch didn’t have the vitality to embrace back, however solid demonstration of help despite everything helped her know she was loved.