When Fronky, a 180-pound mastiff, finishes his breakfast every morning, he immediately heads outside to wait for his best friend to come for a visit.

“After breakfast, Fronky knows his best friend Shaun, the letter carrier, is going to be coming over to see him,” Fronky’s mom, Eileen, told The Dodo. “He can’t contain his excitement, so he’s like, ‘OK, can I go out now?’”

Eileen said that if Shaun takes too long in her truck, getting all the mail and packages ready, Fronky gets impatient.

“He’ll stand on the fence, and for somebody that doesn’t know Fronky, it can be a bit overwhelming,” she said. “He’s 180 pounds, and he doesn’t know he’s twice as big as Shaun.”

He wasn’t always twice as big as Shaun, though. Fronky and Shaun’s friendship began when Fronky was just 7 weeks old.

“The two of them bonded right away, from day one,” Eileen said. “It’s just been an ongoing thing. They see each other pretty much every day unless she’s off.”

Shaun is the highlight of Fronky’s day, and Eileen believes Fronky is one of the highlights of Shaun’s day, too.

“Her job is very stressful and her route is super long,” Eileen said. “I think just having this little break with Fronky helps her out and gives her something to look forward to.”

Sometimes Shaun can only stay long enough to give Fronky a treat and drop the mail, but most of the time, she makes time to give Fronky lots of scratches and pets on his head. “And even at the end when she leaves, every time she either says, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ or, if she’s off, she says, ‘I won’t see you for a couple of days,’” Eileen said. “She always lets him know.”

Since falling for Shaun, Fronky has made an effort to get to know people who walk by his yard, too. “He knows everyone on our block,” Eileen said, including delivery workers like UPS drivers and other USPS mailcarriers.

But Fronky has a special place in his heart for Shaun. “It just makes me so happy that every day he has this great moment of happiness in his life to look forward to with Shaun,” Eileen said, adding that he even waits for her to come on Sunday, her day off. He sometimes waits for her by the fence until nighttime.

“Shaun sort of has become part of our family,” she continued. “As soon as [Fronky] hears her voice, his tail is just out of control … I think her relationship with Fronky is really special to her, [too]. I like that it’s a mutual love. I feel like she loves him as much as he loves her.”