Family raised pet mastiff for two whole years before realising it wasn’t actually a dog

Dogs are one of the best animals on the planet, and as we all know, in the size department, they are not created equally.

From pocket pooches to dogs that could be mistaken for wolves, there's a lot to choose from.

But in 2018, one family, who raised a 'mastiff' for two years got the shock of their lives when they discovered their monster pooch wasn't even a dog...

The first sign that all wasn't what it appeared to be with the Tibetan mastiff was its weight.

Alamy / Lou Linwei

While these big dogs can reach a weight of up to 150 pounds, this particular 'dog' ended up growing to be a staggering 250 pounds.

Things then took another turn when it began to walk on its hind legs.

Can you see where we're going with this yet?

The family pet first entered their lives back in 2016 when a woman named Su Yun brought the animal to her village in Yunnan, China.

As reported by the Independent, the 'dog' had an incredible appetite and was eating a 'box of fruits and two buckets of noodles' a day.

Then, as time began to pass, the pet's owner started to wonder if it was even a Tibetan mastiff as it began to increasingly resemble a bear.

"The more he grew, the more like a bear he looked," she told China News. "I am a little scared of bears."

She eventually called authorities and they confirmed that her suspicions were correct.

The woman hadn't been raising a Tibetan mastiff but an Asiatic black bear.

Nat Geo Wild/YouTube

As reported by the Sun, in China, the animals are allegedly sold for huge sums of money on the black market, where they are used in traditional Asian medicine and foods.

A chemical found in the bear's bile, ursodeoxycholic acid, for example, is used to treat liver disease and gallstones.

However, fortunately for this bear, it was taken in by the Yunnan Wildlife Rescue Center.

But despite being a family pet for so long, staff were apparently so scared of what the animal might do that they sedated it prior to its transportation.

Alamy / toby de silva

Thankfully, the move appeared to have gone smoothly and the bear is now living its best life after things got off to an unusual start.

But incredibly, Su Yun is not the only person in China to have made this mistake.

In March 2018, another man from the same province allegedly did exactly the same thing after finding a bear in a forest and assuming it was a stray dog and taking it in.