Watch: The lovely moment cocker spaniel brothers are reunited in park

Life is made of unexpected moments that you just don’t see coming.

Call it fate, synchronicity or luck, sometimes you are just in the right place at the right time.

This was the very situation Leon Stanford, his partner Ria and their dog Rolo found themselves in a couple of days ago.

Originally intending to head to St Fagans Food Festival, when they found themselves stuck in traffic they decided to head to Victoria Park in Cardiff.

There they were enjoying the surroundings, when chocolate coloured cocker spaniel Rolo spotted another cocker spaniel that looked pretty much identical to him.

Leon takes up the story: “We got Rolo on 15th November 2019 and he was born 12th September. We bought our first house together in the August and having a dog was a big dream of mine.

“We travelled up to Housty Kennels Felindre Swansea on the 12th October. It was during the Rugby World Cup so the dog breeders named the cocker spaniel litter initially after rugby players, ours being Biggar.

“There were eight in the litter, four black and four chocolate cocker spaniels, all boys. When we went to pick out which one we wanted we already had a name in mind, hilariously being Selsig as our plan was to have two and called them Selsig and Blodyn. When we saw him he snuggled into Ria’s hair and we immediately had a connection but it didn’t feel like a Selsig.

“We were then thinking of chocolate bar names and it wasn’t until we picked him up from the breeders who had a cat called Rolly that we thought of Rolo.

“Since we’ve always looked on the kennel’s Facebook page to see pictures of possible brothers and we thought found one called Billy but never met him in person.”

Watch Rolo and Teddie are thrilled to see each other

This time however, fate would very much play its hand.

“When meeting other dogs for the first time they usually have a sniff and suss each other out but when Rolo met the other cocker spaniel it was immediately different. They automatically started playing and for about five minutes we walked with the owners of the other cocker spaniel who is called Teddie as they mirrored each other, literally going up to the same puddles doing the exact same thing, going up to the same trees and copying each other.”

When Leon asked how old Teddy was they said he was turning three on Monday. They couldn’t believe it.

“We knew Teddie had to be from Housty Kennels, where we got Rolo,” says Leon. “We don’t always see cocker spaniels the same colour as our Rolo so it’s always special when we do but on this walk in some weird chance of meetings, Rolo met his brother Teddie two days before his third birthday.”

Today both Rolo and Teddie are celebrating their third birthdays and according to Leon, he and Ria will be making more trips to Victoria Park, so Rolo can see his brother.