Animal Planet

Every August, nearly 100 dogs converge on a parking lot carpeted with sod outside Carmichael Lynch in Minneapolis. The agency's daylong Dog Daze is a canine free-for-all, featuring a dog parade down Hennepin Avenue, dog races and stupid dog tricks. Professional dog groomers are on hand, along with a photographer, whose black-and-white portraits of the dogs and their owners line the walls at CL. The rest of the year, dogs are welcome at the agency. (Art producer Bonnie Brown even brings along her cat, Domino, once a month.) "It's like having dogs in a nursing home—you live longer," says founder and managing partner Lee Lynch, owner of Cork, a Wheaton terrior who's a regular in the parade and in the office. "As long as the dogs are well-managed, it's OK." While pets are banned from most corporate offices, CL is one of a sprinkling of agencies that have gone to the dogs. Experts echo Lynch when describing the benefits of pets in the workplace. "Employees perceive that [pets at work] reduce stress," says Dr. Rose Perrine of Eastern Kentucky University's psychology department, author of the 2001 study "Critters in the Cube Farm" with Dr. Meredith Wells. "Employees also thought pets improved mental and physical health, and organization effects, such as attendance and productivity." At the aptly named Mad Dogs & Englishmen in New York, dogs help make the agency more homey. "A lot of employees are young and not from New York, and I think having dogs around creates an environment that's less hard edge," says co-chairman Robin Hafitz. When managing partner and chief creative officer Nick Cohen founded the shop in 1991, he liked to say he considered his two dogs the first staff members. Now, Mad Dogs' Web site includes profiles of staffers' pooches. (Kingston, for example, who is half-German shepherd and half-chow-chow, "is currently employed in the creative department as a door-stop, hairy rug, garbage disposal and art director.") Roger Sametz, president and founder of Boston branding firm Sametz Blackstone Associates, has been bringing dogs to work for 30 years. "My intent was always to have a place to work that was the right mix of corporate and artistic—part of creating that environment is to wear suits and have dogs," says Sametz, owner of a fuzzy black Tibetan terrier, Mr. Knightly, who goes along to the office every day. When Sametz is out at a meeting, the receptionist walks the dog, paging him through the intercom when it's time to get going. "Two clients at Harvard only want to meet in our office, because they want to play with the dogs," says Sametz. "So on the nuts-and- bolts level, we save cab fare."At StrawberryFrog in Amsterdam, co-founder and creative partner Scott Goodson claims that Zorro, his black, flat-haired retriever, helped win the MSN account because "the client loved dogs and thought Z was the most adorable dog they had seen." In Los Angeles, TBWA\ Chiat\Day's dog-friendly leanings came in handy last February when the shop won the $60 million Pedigree dog-food business. The agency later staged a dog show, which the client came in to judge. At the office, TBWA Worldwide chairman and chief creative officer Lee Clow's German shepherd and Australian shepherd are joined by about two dozen dogs every day, says public relations director Ryan Fey, who brings Digger, his rat terrier. "They're part of our culture," Fey says. "We have birthday parties for them."At some agencies, however, pets cause a few problems. Doug Eymer, co-founder and partner at Eymer Design in Cohasset, Mass., had brought his German short-haired pointer Bodoni (named after the typeface) to work for nine years until Boston independent Partners + Simons acquired his design boutique three years ago. At the new office, says Eymer, "someone was afraid of her." Not to mention that staffers—and the occasional client—did not always appreciate having a soggy tennis ball dropped in their lap.And Mad Dogs' Hafitz admits that the dogs have caused a few dilemmas: "More than once in the middle of a new-business pitch, a dog has walked in and peed right in front of the client."

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Lisa Van Der Pool

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Lisa Van Der Pool