We wanted to take a few minutes to talk about our recent non-human addition to the team, Rowdy. As you may or may not know, my mother passed away in January. When we moved her into a senior living facility in November, I had the not-so-fun task of re-homing several dogs, a cat, and a rabbit. A good friend and fellow Marine, Randy Watkins, helped me a ton. I don’t think I could have made this all happen if it wasn’t for him. If you need a home loan, give Randy a shout. He’s a good dude, a retired Marine, and one of my best friends; he stepped up and helped out with my Mom’s stuff toward the end. Thanks, Randy, I’ll forever owe you, my friend!
So, back to the pups. For the dog pack, there were six dogs we had to re-home. The subject of this article is one of them. I was delighted that five of the six went to people we knew or my Mom knew. A former co-worker of hers took one, Sam here at HBC took Mikey home, and Charlie went to live with one of my wife’s employees (which is great because we get to see him a few times a week when he comes to work (see pic below). One went to live at one of my wife’s senior properties that her company manages so she’s living the best life getting all kinds of love from the residents there. The last one, a pretty senior Chihuahua, went to live with a foster who had several other senior chihuahuas.
So that’s five; we took in the last one, Rowdy, and decided to keep him. My wife wasn’t on board with this initially, but my daughter and I prevailed MAINLY since Rowdy is quite docile and laid back, unlike his name. He’s opposite to his new sister Evie who is a ball of energy all day, every day.
So just like Evie, Rowdy comes to work every day with us. Unlike Evie, who seeks attention and wants people to play with her all the time, Rowdy prefers to sit in laps or be held like a baby, and when those things happen, he has a hard time staying awake. We jokingly say he’s our head of security, but he would fail at that occupation in real life. He spends most of his time sleeping.
Rowdy is a curious-looking little fellow, so we were super curious about what kind of dog he was. We did the DNA test with Embark (our second time using them, super fun experience), and this is what we got back. We all had different guesses, but nobody here nailed it 100%. For perspective, he’s probably about 15 lbs., maybe a foot long, and about 10 inches tall. I would have never guessed his dominant breed would be a pit bull, but we introduced him to everyone as our pit bull mix. Evie is a pit and blue heeler, so we have two pit bull mixes, although you can’t tell from looking at either. We thought the below was super cool and interesting. We thought he would be more Chihuahua and Dachshund mix, so we were genuinely, and pleasantly, surprised by the DNA results!
Rowdy’s Main DNA Breakdown
Rowdy’s Super-muttedness
Rowdy brings a unique calmness and tranquility to the office that Evie doesn’t. They are opposites, but now we have both ends of the spectrum from a dog-o therapy standpoint. Do you need to go outside and walk to the dog park to get some air? Evie’s the one for you. Do you need to sit back, relax, and have someone sweet to pet and love? Rowdy’s your guy.
We still absolutely love our new office, and Rowdy adds another dimension and aspect of things to love here at our home away from home.
Please join us in welcoming Rowdy to our office and our lives. I did want to keep one of the dogs to honor my Mom and take care of her pet as she would have liked, so we’re doing just that with Rowdy, and he’s got a pretty darn good life now. Please let us know if you’re ever in or around the downtown / Deep Ellum area. Rowdy (and Evie) would love to meet you in person and show you around.
