First off, the basics, because I know this is the first time most of you are seeing Lady.
Lady is a shorthaired Shih-tzu with an underbite of varying subtlety.
Lady is five years old.
Lady is, strangely enough, from Nebraska.
Lady is my girlfriend Michelle’s dog first, and my dog in a more adopted sense, though lately I have come to call her mine also.
Lady lives in our apartment and generally commutes to work with me. Also, I love her.
It’s very difficult to not love a dog like Lady, because she will brute-force you into doing so. Lady is the kind of dog who will stare weirdly deeply into your soul—with, as we often accuse her of having, her big boba-tea-tapioca-ball eyes—and growl until you pet her. Lady lightly nibbles the fabric of our shirts and blankets when she’s feeling comfortable (a phenomenon mainly observed in pit bulls, inexplicably known as the “pibble nibble”), she gets up on her hind legs and bats at doors with her paws when she wants to go outside, and when she dreams, she emits the softest little barks I have ever heard.
Since Day One of The Pickup, Lady has been our office dog. It’s no exaggeration to say that the office has become Lady’s favorite place. Work is where friends are; work is where there are big wide windows she can stare out of; work is where she walks on big city sidewalks and pees on interesting walls. Before I started bringing her to the office, she was essentially agnostic about where she walked in our neighborhood. Now, each day, when we walk out the front door, Lady bolts towards my truck.
“She wants to go to work,” we will joke, except it is not a joke. Not anymore.
Last week, something happened. My girlfriend operates a vintage clothing store down the street from The Pickup’s office (you should visit the shop if you like vintage clothes), and sometimes Lady goes to work there as well. As we were hanging shelves in the store, Lady was wandering around the store off her leash.
Then, from outside, I heard a scream.
I went out and saw Lady running, off-leash, away from the store. Someone had accidentally let her out and she had taken her chance. She was crossing from the parking lot into a wide alleyway, headed for a larger, busier road. I immediately went into the fullest and dumbest sprint I have ever run in my entire life, Dog Dad mode fully engaged, my mind blank of anything but get her get her get her. I careened across the road and yelled, but she refused to listen. She was too busy hauling ass.
Suddenly, as we gained the sidewalk, she slowed, started sniffing the ground, and turned towards the nearest building. It was then that I realized that we were just outside, yes, you guessed it, The Pickup’s fucking office. Lady came to a stop at the door of the office, went up on her hind legs, and began to bat at the door with her paws. As I slowed my sprint and bent down to scoop her up, I began to laugh: she really, really wanted to go to work.
So, today, we’re excited to announce that Lady has won the prestigious Pickup Employee Of The Month award for July. It was a tight race, but in the end, Lady’s unending moral and emotional support (licking our ankles and occasionally barking at us for pets) won out. Congratulations to Lady; may your next award be won by less dramatic and terrifying means.
