Dog’s Best Friend: Water Heater Gets Pup Jazzed up Beyond Belief in Adorable TikTok

A TikToker named Kimmy (@kimmyjslice10315) posted a viral clip of her dog having the time of her life with the water heater in the basement of her home.

She recorded her dog's water heater obsession in a viral TikTok that's accrued over 1.3 million views on the popular social media platform.

"When a dog's best friend is the hot water tank," a text overlay in the video reads. It begins with a happy dog on a bed. It doesn't take long to see that the pup is enthusiastically walking through the hall of the home until she reaches a door.

She begins to jump at the door, her tongue lolling out. Next, the camera cuts to footage of the TikToker walking down a flight of stairs. Out of nowhere, the same black dog can be seen jumping emphatically onto a chair in the corner of the room.

Next, the pup runs into another room. The TikToker turns a corner and asks, "Where is it?" this prompts an excited yelp from the dog. Who begins to jump and happily yelp again, with a look of adoration in her eyes as she stares directly at the water heater right in front of her.

"Is that your best friend? Do you love the water tank? Yeah? Ohhh, what's it doing?" she asks the dog, who begins to pace around happily. "What's it doing?" The pup jumps up in the air again and continues to stare at the water heater, so happy to be in its presence.

This isn't the first time a dog's affinity for a home's heating system has been documented and shared with the rest of the internet. Redditor JurgWug uploaded a picture of their pup cozying up to a vent in their home.

"The dog likes to snuggle up against the heater in the winter," they penned as the title of their post. In it, a sleepy-eyed pup can be seen resting his head against a vent. This dog's love for the heating system, however, seems a bit more practically rooted.

That's because they're just trying to get warm in the wintertime. The picture prompted some responses from other Redditors, like one who recommended that OP get their puppy a certain product to ensure that they are safe and warm: "Your doggo would LOVE a heating pad. They are cheap and safe."

It was a sentiment echoed by someone else who wrote: "Your doggo would just love a heating pad."

There have also been other stories of people's pet dogs imprinting themselves on inanimate objects, forming what sounds like special bonds with them.

A Quora post contains a few adorable stories of dogs doing just that, like this one person with a spayed rescue dog who would collect squeaky toys and "small stuffed animals" that she treated "as if they were her pups."

The user went on to say: "She’d nest with them, hide them when it was time to go out, check on them, guard them."

Another person said that their friend had a dog who did something similar: "A friend had a sweet-natured little mongrel — part Dachshund, from the long, low look of it — who would get a bit excited if she didn't have her favorite toy with her on trips out of the house."

They continued: "It was a small plush thing, but I don't recall which animal it was supposed to represent. I doubt very much that the dog cared about that. It was her tiny placebo for whatever ailed her at the time."

When it comes to imprinting and dogs, however, discussions are often centered on humans and living beings, as Brianne Larson does in this blog post.

TikTokers who responded to Kimmy's post said that their pups, too, formed special bonds with non-living things.

Like this one user who penned: "My dog was weirdly fascinated by our tank too. Turned out there was a leak and she was smelling the gas. Please look into getting that checked."

Someone else speculated that maybe the dog left one of their favorite dog toys in the basement and has been looking for it ever since: "I wonder if she saw a critter on it one day or if a treat or toy fell down from it. They never let that stuff go."