When my human decided to start working from the office instead of from home, I don’t think she was fully aware of just what a blow it would be to me and my schnoodle buddy Napoleon. For our whole lives, we could count on her being right where we wanted her: here. Now she’s gone all day. It’s just awful.
My friend Wilson the pug has an ideal situation. His human, Holly Porch, is a graphic designer at Riverside Theatre. Wilson started coming to work with her soon after she started, when she happened to mention to someone that she had a pug at home. “You know people bring their dogs to work here all the time,” her friend told her.
That was all it took. From then on, Wilson commutes to work with Holly. He keeps a little bed in her office, and follows her all over the theater.
His biggest fan is the big shot himself, Allen Cornell, Riverside’s executive director. Wilson tells me that Allen gets down on all fours to have a conversation with him.
“He comes by every day to visit,” he says. Holly thinks it’s Wilson’s expressive face that draws such a crowd. “He’s got those clown make-up eyes with the points at the top and the bottom. They’re like little eyebrows and they make his face so expressive and so animated.”
It’s fitting that Mr. Wilson is such a hit at Riverside. After all, he got his name from a famous movie star: the soccer ball in “Castaway.”
But he’s hardly the only four-legged creature around. Caitlin Griffing, the company manager who takes care of all the actors’ housing, brings her little black poodle to work. Wilson just loves it when the poodle shows up at the office. They have a wild time together racing down the hallway. And sometimes, Allen brings his beautiful spaniel, Brandy.
And even when he’s the only dog there, the humans make such a fuss over him that it’s more like vacation than work. They even greet him with a special song, the one that little humans sing in school, that goes: “We’re all in our places with bright shining faces.”
Now I don’t know how bright Wilson’s face actually shines. But just like a school kid, he knows how to use his inside bark, Holly says. “It’s a soft little howl, as opposed to the “I’m going to kill everything I see” outside bark he uses in his own back yard,” she says. Holly calls it his “open for business” bark. She must understand that Mr. Wilson has a job, too, chasing all those lizards and birds. He just works from home. Lucky Holly gets to come to work with him.
Til next time,
Raven
