Happy National Pet Day from Fairygodboss!

8 Comments

1. Rebecca EvanoffApril 11,2025 at 5:02PM UTC

   Finn, my little terrier mix rescue is actually here at work with me today. He's sporting one of his super cute flannels and hanging out in my office 'filing' as he says...though I hear snores

2. Katie Farello KrausApril 11,2025 at 5:53PM UTC

   Yay, happy Pet Day to all the furry friends of Fairygodboss! Feel so lucky to work from home and take care of my 7 month old bernedoodle, Remoulade (better known as Remi)! (Seriously though... how do in-office workers do it?!) It used to make my whole day when a coworker’s dog would crash a Zoom call. It's so much fun to finally have my own little pup popping up and making people smile. Best coworker I could ask for!

3. misskelleypApril 11,2025 at 7:16PM UTC

   Tilly the Border Collie mix excels at waiting until I'm on a call (the more important the call, the better) to bark like a crazy dog at some perceived threat. Her next best trick is to curl up under my desk and snore loudly while ensuring that I cannot move my legs or feet.

4. AnonymousApril 12,2025 at 2:18PM UTC

   I have an 11-lb. Chihuahua/Rat Terrier mix named Isaiah, who is the highlight of my life. It doesn't matter what I've done or how I feel; I am always greeted with a "happy dance" every time I come home. He is also a nice "snuggle buddy" at night.

5. AnonymousApril 12,2025 at 10:11PM UTC

   I don't have pets. I am happy with others. I wouldn't do it to kids. I usually wouldn't do it to others' pets. It was only one year. I am not aproval seeking.

6. JB09718April 13,2025 at 6:59AM UTC

   My boy is Bentley. We adopted him 10 years ago from a tiny rural low kill shelter. His paperwork was a mess. We were told he was picked up as a stray and was a full grown 50lb black lab. He turned out to be a German shepherd/malinois/lab puppy about 1yr old. (For those of you familiar with the breeds, he looks like a black German shepherd with a mal brain/personality/drive and some lab brain tendencies.)

   He was impossible to train, not food or treat motivated at all. Tennis balls were his only motivator. We joked he escaped a k9 training facility at first, he was so smart once we figured out what motivated him and k9s use tennis balls for training! One day we were outside trying our hand at scent work. Tennis ball bounced off his chompers and into the neighbors yard. Neighbor had a high chain link fence. Bentley looks at me, the ball, the fence and takes off. HE CLIMBS UP AND OVER THE FENCE!!! Gets his ball and then… malinois brain shuts off and lab brain takes over…? He can’t figure out how to climb with the ball in his mouth! I have to break into the neighbors yard (who we haven’t even met yet! we just moved in a few weeks ago!) and walk him by the collar home. He did not learn his lesson and this repeats frequently over the years.

   The past 10 years have been a wild ride and he’s starting to slow down. I’m hoping he makes it at least another 10 years though because he is the ultimate goodest boy and I will never meet another dog like him in my life.

7. Sarah GreenwoodApril 13,2025 at 6:58PM UTC

   Bentley sounds awesome. Your story made me giggle that he climbed over a fence to get his ball like a K9 ninja... then couldn't work out how to climb back with a ball in his mouth. Thanks for sharing.

8. Sarah GreenwoodApril 13,2025 at 6:55PM UTC

   I joke I have a wagging tail, because where I go, so do my dogs. My current dogs are 'Shambles' his special skill is to channel his inner husky and try and howl in the background of my MS Teams meetings when certain staff members speak. And 'Giblets'- who is an absolute hooligan and puppynado, her special talents include parading dirty laundry in the background of my MS Teams meetings.

   I also have cats. The eldest 'Wolfey' is also keen on joining in meetings. He is 18, it takes him ages to climb onto my shoulders, and after all that effort I tend to let him stay there. Even if he tends to meow loudly every time, I unmute my microphone to speak!

   I lost my confidence during the pandemic; I am deaf and immune deficient. Technology changed so much, so did the world of work... and I felt left behind. Much of my recovery mentally has been through taking on voluntary roles in our company DEI. I have grown so much in the process. I write for our employee group for disabled employees, often about inclusion, equity, or reasonable adjustments (I am in the UK) and sometimes my 'worst pets in the world' feature too.

   I had not realised until about a year ago, that my pets have brightened many colleagues’ days. As much as I have inwardly cringed at some of their antics in meetings or wondered about the wisdom sharing their antics with our members, they do make people smile.

   The first time I was invited to our company headquarters, I felt very overwhelmed. I felt like a very small (and deaf) fish. Over the noise I heard a voice call ‘How are the dogs?’ I did not know where the speaker was, or who they were at that point, but my response is always the same ‘They are awful! Did you hear that Shambles has…’. A couple of other people in the foyer turned (I recognised them from our company communications) they joined in chatting about an article I wrote about ‘Shambles’, he never questions why life delivers him tennis balls, he just enjoys chasing them whenever he can. In that moment I felt accepted and that I belonged… due to my mentally unstable, badly behaved senior canine and his love of smelly tennis balls.