Many animal lovers usually dream of having a bear-like doggo as a pet. The Tibetan mastiff is one of the fluffiest dogs that can fulfill this dream—other than an actual bear, of course. A family in Southwest China realized that their 250-pound pet dog was actually a bear walking on hind legs as he grew older.

Su Yun brought what she thought was a Tibetan mastiff to her home in a Chinese village in Yunnan province, China, while on vacation in 2016. The puppy had an insatiable appetite for food, eating a "box of fruits and two buckets of noodles every day," she told Chinese Media, per Independent. 

"The more he grew, the more like a bear he looked," Yun shared. "I am a little scared of bears." The Tibetan mastiff she thought she had can typically reach around 82 kilograms (180 pounds) and stands 71 centimeters (28 inches) tall but what she had in fact was a 250-pound bear. When the pet refused to stop growing and began walking on two legs, the family realized they had made a mistake. 

When Yun contacted authorities, she discovered that her pet was not a dog or any member of the canine family for that matter. It was, in fact, a critically endangered Asiatic black bear. Official footage shows the bear standing nearly a meter (3 feet) tall with bear-like features. Despite the fact that the bear was kept as a household pet by the Yun family, staff was reportedly so terrified of the animal that they sedated him before transporting him to the Yunnan Wildlife Rescue Centre. 

The humongous Asiatic black bear is an endangered species that can sell for thousands of dollars on the black market. For millennia, they have been used in traditional Asian medicine and cuisine, and they can be more valuable than gold. In Chinese traditional medicine, a chemical found in bear bile (ursodeoxycholic acid), a substance produced in the gallbladder, is used to treat a variety of ailments such as liver disease, according to Insider.

Although it does sound scary, one can't help but giggle at the news of a bear cub being mistaken for a puppy (after all, they both look adorable). This wasn't the first time a bear cub was mistaken for a fluffy puppy.

In March 2018, a man from the same Yunnan province had reportedly raised a bear after discovering them roaming in the forest and mistaking them for a stray dog. He contained them in a cage. You'd be mistaken if you thought this confusion existed only when it came to bears and dogs. In May 2018, A woman assumed she had purchased a Japanese Spitz puppy, only to discover it was a fox, per Daily Mail. At three months, her dog stopped eating dog food and started growing a long, fluffy tail.

We feel a little sorry for the woman and the bear who had to be separated, though. May we always raise mastiffs and adore bears from afar.