Here at JKS, we welcome visitors to our office, but we do tell them one thing – if you don’t like dogs, you may not like it here. My Great Pyrenees, Tray, and my Bernese Mountain Dog, Cal, have the run of the place. As a result, our offices have more fur and drool than most people are used to. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
My first dog was a Great Pyrenees named BJ. After he died in 2002, I told Will that I couldn’t live in the house we had back then without a dog. So, we went to look at some Great Pyrenees puppies. Now here’s a warning – don’t go look at Great Pyrenees puppies if you don’t want a Great Pyrenees puppy, because they look like little polar bear cubs, and there will be one going home with you. I came home with a sweet female puppy and named her Sugar Mint Spencer.
At the time we were headed to the beach, so we got to know Sugar for a few days, and then the time came for me to go back to work. I dutifully put her in the crate on Monday morning and left the house. But then I went back to listen at the door, and I could hear her in her crate, crying like she was being murdered. So, I called Will and told him, “Either Sugar is going to have a stay-at-home mom, or I’m going to have to bring her to work, because I can’t leave her in this crate.” And if you know Will his words won’t seem unusual. He said verbatim, “Get that damn dog in the car and get to work.”
That’s the day we became a dog-friendly office.
I eventually got another Great Pyrenees, Baxter, and brought both dogs to work. Sadly, they’ve since passed on, but now we have Cal and Tray. They stay in the office area mostly, although Tray does like to roam far and wide, sometimes getting into places he shouldn’t. (He gets trapped in the Ladies restroom often.) In fact, my office was designed with the dogs in mind, because by the time we built our new offices they were a fixture. If you go into my office, you’ll see things like dog bowls that match the décor and a couch where Tray lays all the time (and why not – it’s his couch). After all, I just work here, but as far as the dogs are concerned, this is their daytime home.
Now you may be wondering, how do the other employees feel about having two big dogs (they’re about 250 lbs. total) walking around the office? Well, they’re fine with it. In fact, studies have shown that having dogs in the office has a lot of benefits. For instance:
- They help relieve stress
- They improve company morale
- They get people together, start conversations and make for an overall friendlier workplace
- People stay at work longer if they don’t have to worry about going home to let their dog out
- If you’re trying to attract good people, being dog friendly could be that deciding factor
(Here’s a great article from USA Today that goes into a lot more detail about all the advantages.)
So, if you decide to come by and pay us a visit, we’d love to have you. Just remember we’re very dog friendly here, not only because it makes us happy, but because it makes good business sense as well. It’s a bow-wow win-win!