Swans mate for life. So rescuers try to avoid, as much as possible, separating a bonded pair.

But when a female swan from Dublin got very sick, rescuers had no choice but to remove her from her pond and take her to the vet. Her male partner was left behind.

“[She] was lethargic and not moving a whole lot,” Shane Lawlor of the DSPCA in Dublin, Ireland, told The Dodo. “So we brought her in and got her to the vet, and they just nursed her back to health and put her on a healthy diet. I think she was on fluids for a little while because she was quite dehydrated.”

While the female swan got help, her mate struggled in her absence.

“Members of the public and ourselves continued to check on the the male swan each day to make sure he was OK,” Lawlor said. “Apparently, he hadn’t been eating too well, either, since she was removed, so it was very important to get her back.”

“They would really miss each other,” Lawlor added. “You know, they would yearn for each other.”

Luckily, the female swan managed to recover in about a week. And once she was ready, Lawlor took her back to her pond.

Here’s that happy moment on video:

The moment she saw her mate, the female swan started calling for him. Her mate immediately began making his way towards her.

“He was out on the middle of the [pond] because the fringes of it were frozen,” said Lawlor, who caught the moment on video. “So he was literally just beating his way through the ice when he’d seen her to get to her.”

Since their reunion, the swans haven’t left each other’s side.

“They’re actually getting ready to nest,” Lawlor said. “The eggs will arrive shortly and then the cygnets will arrive, so they’ll be there together in the summertime. It’s just really nice.”