Puppy Power

Meet Violet Wiggins.  She joined our family almost three weeks ago.  It's been remarked that upstate dogs live better than most city residents, and that may well be true. But Mrs. Wiggins had a rough start and deserves a little coddling.  She was picked up, scared and lost, on a back road in Arkansas.

The vet, after examining her, suspects that she got dumped as soon as she had her first heat. The shelter here in NY guesstimated her age at two, but the vet says nope - that's a yearling. She's just a puppy.

She's a very, very well behaved puppy and far calmer than I have any right to expect from such a young dog.  So I bring her with me to the office.

I'm not alone in this - our broker has a very spoiled, adorable Maltese who comes along with her when she is in the office. Another salesperson has a Lab/Boxer cross with the most soulful face ever and a wagging tail that can knock down a chair. Violet is a bit unsure, as she is with most new things, and spends most of her time sleeping under my desk on my feet. But she does come out and greet new people, sitting at their feet and waiting to be petted.

Clients, so far, seem to love a dog in the office.  And all the dogs enjoy visitors.  Many clients walk in with their own dogs in tow.  There sometimes seem to be as many dogs on the streets of Woodstock as there are people.  So Violet's landed in a pretty good place.

But not everyone approves.  Some colleagues who don't have dogs aren't pleased by our dog-friendly office policy.  They're not scheduled to be in the office (I would leave Violet home out of respect for their working hours if they were) but they stop in and their disapproval is clear.

So I'm wondering - what do most people think about well-behaved dogs in the workplace?