Barley, a golden retriever from Brookhaven on Long Island, was diagnosed with epilepsy in February 2024. Her medication stopped the seizures, but her owners say it also dulled her personality. "She lost her goldenness," Tori Cannarelli told CBS News and The Washington Post. Then in May 2024 a four-day-old Pekin duck named Louie arrived. He had hatched in a Long Island elementary school classroom, and Tori's husband Justin had planned to take him to the garden centre he runs. Instead the family kept him, because he was bringing Barley back out of her shell. Within weeks the two were inseparable. Tori told CBS News that Barley "started smiling again" and "started wagging her tail." She calls Louie Barley's emotional support duck. Barley still takes her medication, and the family says that will be for the rest of her life, but she is smiling again beside her best friend.