Dogs brighten up the biz for owners. Peters introduces four four-legged (in most cases) greeters who lend their owners’ businesses a special ambience.
Tiny Tim
He’s an award-winning New York fashion designer whose work is written about in GQ, New York Magazine and Vogue and spoken of glowingly by the fashion glitterati.
But in the trendy Greenwich Village neighborhood where John Bartlett, creative director of Liz Claiborne’s men’s collection, lives and works, it’s constant companion Tiny Tim who gets the most attention.
When the two stroll to the chichi shop where Bartlett sells his own upscale line and custom work, folks call to Tiny Tim and reach out to give him a pat.
And then the dog — a three-legged, mixed-breed mutt — settles in near the front door of the elegant shop with its quiet air of perfect breeding, to spread his own special brand of customer service.
“A lot of people are drawn in because they see him from the sidewalk,” Bartlett says.
So besotted is the designer with Tiny Tim that the logo on his store is a three-legged dog, and that image appears on the patch of his line of pricey jeans.
“I couldn’t be luckier,” says Bartlett, who got the dog from North Shore Animal League America seven years ago. When Bartlett visited the shelter on his 40th birthday, he was captivated by the “soulful eyes” of long-termer Tiny Tim, so named because he had arrived at the shelter severely injured. His leg was amputated Christmas Eve.
In Bartlett’s circle, there are a lot of “status dogs,” he acknowledges; sometimes someone will deride his tri-pawed dog of indeterminate genetics. Bartlett is untroubled.
“That tells me a lot about that person,” as does the reaction of most people, who find Tiny Tim irresistible.
Jezibelle
The old dog walked in, looked around, took possession of a prime spot on the front-office sofa, and that’s pretty much where she’s been ever since, serving in the official-greeter role she created for herself.
It doesn’t seem to matter that she’s no one’s idea of a beauty queen, what with her broken teeth, half-gone ear and sausage-shaped body. She knows how to spread sunshine with her lopsided doggie grin, and that’s earned her devoted fans in her little community — and a job.
“We didn’t plan on having a mascot, but she claimed us, made this her role and that’s the way it is,” says Ginger Sikes, president of the Animal Lovers Assistance League in Currituck, N.C., where the stray who came to be known as Jezibelle landed in 2008.
Now Jezibelle is integral to the daily operation of the place. She presided over a promotion in which would-be adopters got special consideration if she honored them with a big wet one on the cheek. And she hams it up in seasonal costumes. People pop in just to get a trademark Jezibelle hello.
When she first arrived, efforts were made to find her a home. No more. “We are her family,” says Sikes. “We love her and she knows it. … She’s very happy.”
Fritz
Last year at this time, the little hound mix was desperate, filthy and parasite-ridden, scrounging for life on an Indian reservation near Grand Junction, Colo.
Now he’s the famed Fritz, glossy dog-about-town in Boulder, his sharp-nosed face adorning magazine pages, a familiar presence among the designers, landscapers and artisans who visit the offices of Boulder County Home & Garden Magazine.
“Everybody knows him. It’s ‘Hi, Fritz’ wherever we go,” says Carol Brock, magazine editor who adopted him last March from the Humane Society of Boulder County, which got him through the PetSmart Charities’ Rescue Waggin’ program.
After surgery to remove a blockage from his eat-anything-to-survive days (a baby-bottle nipple) and other treatments, Fritz proved the perfect assistant to Brock on assignments and at the office. He performs tricks for folks when things get slow.
“He learns things in a second,” Brock says. “I thought I’d teach him some tricks and he’s so smart — he learns after just one or two times — I ran out of ideas for tricks.” She went to the bookstore last week for help: a book of 101 dog tricks. She figures it’ll be a few weeks before he masters them all.
Whitaker
Customers of The Tile House in Collierville, Tenn., get the extra perk of genial attention from the good-natured “shop dog,” Whitaker.
What they know is that Whitaker is a big black mongrel. What they don’t know is that Whitaker’s back story is a confluence of miracles big and small that resulted in a happy-go-lucky pup getting a happy-ending life.
When he was 3 months old, a car struck him, breaking his back legs and injuring his lung. His owners called animal control to euthanize him. But the officer couldn’t bring himself to do it and instead asked Fayette County Animal Rescue to try to save him.
After months of surgeries, setbacks, rehab and foster care, the dog the animal rescue folks named Whitaker (for the officer who wouldn’t send him to an early grave) was adoption-ready.
Enter Mike Membreno, tile shop owner, who had wanted a big dog to join his two Jack Russells.
But when he met Whitaker, he realized the shepherd/Lab was surging with energy, and a big unruly dog wasn’t his wife’s idea of ideal.
Still, they decided to foster him. The first time wife met dog, “Whitaker went calmly to her, licking her hand, no jumping.” He obeyed when ordered away from the other dogs’ dishes and “in about 15 minutes he slid next to her and put his head in her lap like a little boy.” The foster-care agreement became adoption papers.
That was three months ago. Now Whitaker works at the store three days a week. “The UPS guy and mailman give him treats,” and the customers “just love him. He’s just one of those dogs with a great way that people respond to,” says Membreno, grateful that the dog that’s with him around the clock most days “just wasn’t gonna quit when he was so bad off.”
