Man’s Best Friend

They say a dog is a “man’s best friend”, and Hippity Hop was mine.

Warning

This article isn’t about Squarespace or coding. This article is about my history with my dog, and his influence on my life / business.

A little over 6 years ago, my wife, Ren, was given Hippity Hop, an older special needs rescue dog that no one else would take. This was a surprise, last-ditch, stay-with-me gift from her (now ex) boyfriend. It didn’t work. They broke up 2 months later. Ladies & gentleman, this never works, don’t be Ren’s ex-boyfriend. But Ren has a bleeding heart, particularly when it comes to elderly dogs, and she kept Hippy.

Hippity Hop had his front left paw removed when he was at the shelter. This made him hippity hop around, thus the name.

Here’s the thing about Hippy, he was needy. Like super needy. He couldn’t be left alone because he would wail all day and the apartment neighbors would get upset. Ren even had DHR called on her once because one of the neighbors was so sure she was leaving a neglected infant alone for hours… but it was just Hippy wailing while she was gone to the gym. So, Ren took him everywhere. With dog-in-bag, she was the epitome of a millennial. We joked that Hippy was her ESA, “Emotionally Supported Animal” instead of her “Emotional Support Animal”.

Eventually, in our personal lives, I realized Ren was more than just a friend to me and we had the talk. We had been friends for five years and it just seemed like we were finding reasons to stay in each others lives. So, I invited her on three dates just to “give this a try” and if we weren’t feeling it after that, then we’d go our separate ways.

I don’t remember the last two dates, but I remember the first vividly. It was a Hippity Hop photo shoot, where we took Hippy around town and dressed him up in little dog costumes and took photos of him. It was stupid and adorable. And it worked, we got married 9 months later. Hippy fulfilled the duty of a wingman, masterfully. 

Shortly before we started dating, we had also started a business together (another story for another day). A new relationship and a new business is a lot to start at the same time and we had a lot to learn.

One of our first lessons was that it’s simple to start a business, but harder to sustain a business. To start a business all you need to do is make one sale, but sustaining a business requires making repeated sales. For many industries, such as web design, your sales are one-and-done. If you do web design right, that client shouldn’t need a new website for a while. So repeat sales need to come from word-of-mouth marketing or referrals. And no one spread the word better than Hippy.  

Hippity Hop was 12 when Ren adopted him. The shelter named him Hippity Hop because he only had 3 paws and he hopped around everywhere. This made him especially cute to people at the co-working space, and everyone stopped by our desk to pet him and admire his dapper little bow-tie. These chance encounters often turned into new business or, at the very least, spread the word about who we were and what we did. 

In the digital marketing world, there is this idea of “lead magnets”, a free offering on your website that attracts potential leads — Hippity Hop was our real-life lead magnet. No joke, 5 years later we’re still getting clients and referrals from people who met us and Hippy in Seattle. 

Over the next few years, Hippy got older and was less able to travel, so we traveled less and didn’t see friends as often. And then the pandemic happened and no one could see their friends. Working from home, on a digital business, with no co-workers, and not being able to see friends or go anywhere is really tough, as most of you know. Then I realized something that I hadn’t realized all the prior years of having him — I was the needy one. Having another living being in my house, one that required my attention and gave me attention back, was a game-changer. Similar to other times in my life, he ended up being the exact right thing we needed at the exact right time.

We used to joke that Hippy would outlive us all, if for no other reason than to make sure he got his breakfast the next day because he loved his food. Less than two weeks ago, when the vet told us he had lymphoma, and that there weren’t really any options left, it didn’t feel real. His health started to decline pretty rapidly, and in the end he left us while he was laying in his favorite place in the world, in his mum’s arms with me right beside him. He was ready, and it was time to let him go.

So today I say goodbye to not just my dog, but my wingman, my salesman, and my best friend. I’m grateful I got to be with him there in the end and that he held on as long as he did. I’m grateful that my wife’s stupid ex-boyfriend got her a dog. And I’m grateful that I got to experience what mans-best-friend really means. 

Thank you, Hippity Hop.