It’s always adorable and touching to see interspecies friendships form between creatures who don’t seem to have a ton in common. Now, powerful photos are going viral showing an interspecies relationship form when a goose goes above and beyond to help shelter a puppy from the cold.

A polar vortex hit North America this winter, meaning that it was a particularly cold winter in many parts of the United States. Back in January, a man was out for a walk on a frigid day in Montana when he noticed a goose cradling a shivering puppy, and he immediately started snapping photos of the pair. Suzanne PadaPetra was so touched by the photos that she shared them to Facebook, where they quickly went viral.

“The man finds a goose that was shaking with cold stuck to a pole in Montana,” she wrote on Facebook alongside the images. “The goose was sheltering with her wings a puppy that was about to die frozen. We have so much to learn as a species.”

Clearly, the goose’s motherly instincts kicked in as soon as she saw the puppy, and she could not bear to see the little creature suffer. Though the puppy was a different species than her, the goose took him under her wing and protected him from the freezing temperatures as if he was her own baby!

This goose can show us humans a thing or two about compassion and self-sacrifice. What a beautiful thing to witness!