Miley the Huntaway Dog - A Personal Reflection & Tribute to Miley
The research is clear and undeniable, where possible, the presence of dogs and other pets in the workplace makes for a happier environment, with less stress, less anxiety, improved morale, and an overall increase in productivity.
Last month, at 14 years of age (approximately 86 in doggy years) Miley, our furry huntaway family member and previously a Culture by Design team coworker suddenly became very ill on a random Tuesday afternoon. Later that night, Miley went into surgery and what the vet found, meant we sadly had to let our beautiful girl go. In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, my husband and I bought Miley home to the farm and when the sun rose, we buried her under the large oak tree, next to Jock and Lass, her huntaway siblings that had lived a life before Miley’s time.
Now while I can say without hesitation, the inconsolable grief felt at losing Miley was hugely intense and similar to the grief of losing my father several years ago, this story is not about grief, loss or even sadness. The key reason for this piece is to personally reflect and celebrate the amazing, paradigm busting work life of Miley. For you see Miley was a working dog, just not in the typical manner of most NZ huntaway working dogs. Rather than the archetypal position of working farm dog, Miley had a work career that spanned several years with successful roles in both the public sector and private business industry. Yes, that’s right NZ Sheepdog Trial Association people in charge, despite your Wikipedia claim that a Huntaway’s core and only task in life is to work stock, Miley broke through your glass ceiling to become an invaluable company team member off the farm!
Now for sure, Miley would follow Michael, my husband, around our country property and was happy to do so, it’s just she had little to no interest in the sheep, seemed somewhat terrified of the cows and spent most of her time exploring the landscape, including smelling flowers in the garden. Yes, it became very clear early on that Miley had a vastly different work calling to that of Jock and Lass. That for some reason Miley was born with an extremely high feeling, old soul, intuitive personality akin to that of a human empath, making her the huntaway version of Ferdinand the Bull. It was this highly attuned, empathic nature that was to define Miley’s inevitable career and give her even more meaningful enjoyment in life. To follow are three examples of how Miley the Huntaway dog applied her intellect, personality, and emotional intelligence in the work environment to simply make the world a better place to be:
Miley’s working career began with Dynamic Controls, a bio-medical engineering company headquartered in Christchurch, NZ. Miley’s first challenge in breaking the glass ceiling was to first break Charlotte the CEO and prove to Charlotte that dogs in the office were indeed a good idea and would not result in either utter chaos and/or unproductive distraction. At the time I was part of the Executive team reporting to Charlotte, and our team were all located in an open plan office. With a dog bed located next to my desk, this gave Miley ample opportunity to show Charlotte that not only was she not a distraction or chaotic in nature but in fact, her furry personality was just genius for improving morale and reducing stress, both of which, of course, resulted in increased productivity.
It was Lucy Hilling, our HR Coordinator at the time that (once Miley had Charlotte across the line) promoted Miley to the role of Employee Morale Officer, issuing her a company photo security badge. On average Miley would spend 1-2 days a week in the office, and while she was now welcome in the Exec office, most workdays had barely begun before Miley was retrieved by various employees and would often end up spending the day in the Engineering department. This is where Miley achieved most of her more meaningful, satisfying work moments, supporting engineers that were at times under extreme time pressures to complete stage gate projects.
2. Workplace Culture Co-Facilitator
After her time with Dynamic Controls, Miley had accumulated enough skillset and knowledge to be promoted to the role of Workplace Culture Co-Facilitator at Culture by Design. Along with Pearl, our other team furry Co-Facilitator, Miley attended both office day events and co-facilitated client team workshops. Over the years, Marie and I have had to facilitate some fairly tough client team workshops, whereby some of the teams we have worked with, were at the time experiencing high levels of team dysfunction and extremely low levels of poor morale.
Where possible, to have both Pearl and Miley present at these crucial team workshops was simply invaluable. Many of the workshop participants experienced high levels of stress and anxiety before attending the workshop but to walk in the room, see and know there were furry co-facilitators available throughout the workshop meant a great deal to some of the attendees. The presence of both Miley and Pearl bought an immediate sense of calm and this of course is, because petting a dog is known to evaluate levels of serotonin and dopamine. Which in turn, has the impact of both relaxing a person, as well as significantly reducing feelings of stress. It is extremely difficult to transfer knowledge and learning to workshop participants that are feeling stressed and anxious, let alone get them to share and partake in what can be challenging and confronting situations. The strength and power of knowing that we had furry co-facilitator secret weapons, as a key resource to provide a perceived, much safer environment for workshop learning transfer, just can’t be overstated enough.
I have worked with many senior leadership teams over the years, and there are of course, a few Executive teams that stand out to me for one reason or another. However, when it comes to Miley, there is a senior leadership team that enabled her to achieve one of her finest moments in bringing a sense of peace and calm to what was a sad and tragic situation. This was a senior leadership team in the educational sector that found themselves dealing with a staff member, who over time had increasingly bought insidious chaos and toxicity to the work environment. The considerable damage and collateral damage of the staff member’s actions were at such a degree that the two most senior leaders of the institute were considering resignation.
My remit in this challenging situation was to work with the senior leadership team on a strategy and action plan to bring direction, clarity and calmness back to the working environment. To start this process, I meet with the senior leadership team offsite, at a private venue, so the leaders could voice their concerns, thoughts, and feelings about what had happened over the previous 6-12 months. I just happened to have Miley with me at work on this day, and as the meeting began, she quietly found a spot in the corner of the room to lie down and have an afternoon nap. Not long after the discussion had begun, one of the senior leaders broke down in floods of tears and began physically shaking and sobbing. This went on for some time and as much as all of us tried, none of us in the room were able to find the right words to comfort and calm this leader. What happened next still amazes me to this day. Miley suddenly stood up from her napping spot, ignoring the rest of us, she quietly walked across the room, sat next to the leader, looked directly into her eyes, and then just lay her head down on the leader’s knee, a person Miley had never met before. As the leader started to quietly stroke Miley’s head almost in unconscious manner, there was an immediate change in the leader’s demeanour, in that she instantly stopped shaking and sobbing, and instead began to speak in a calm, relaxed and compelling manner. If ever there a real-life example to demonstrate the significant power of dogs and pets to reduce stress and anxiety, it would be fair to say that on that day, every person in that room witnessed this power in a profound way.
Special Note on Huntaways
For those of you that don’t know, Huntaways are the only New Zealand dog classified as indigenous to our country and while working stock was not to be for Miley, there is a very proud history and legacy of huntaways as working stock dogs in this country. I certainly do not want to minimise or make light of this proud legacy and have seen firsthand, many times the incredible value that these beautiful, intelligent creatures add to the workload of our hard-working farmers. In addition, how much Huntaways generally love working side by side with their farmer family members is truly inspirational. My point though, is that sometimes not everything fits the mould, and this was certainly the case with Miley, she did not fit the mould of a typical working farm dog and it would have been easy to dismiss her ability to add value in other ways.
Just like Miley, not all Huntaways are born to be successful as working stock dogs and where this is the case, as Miley clearly demonstrated over and over, they can add value to our community in other incredible ways. Huntaways are intelligent, gentle in nature, great with children and make amazing furry family members. If though, the thought of adopting a Huntaway into your family has ever entered your mind, it’s important to know that Huntaways require significant amounts of exercise, more that the average family dog, so would only suit an active family or a family with lots of land. By the way, while Huntaways are very playful by nature, do not bother throwing them a stick or ball, it appears to be beneath their intelligence to ‘fetch’. In relation to being an office dog, it’s important to note that Miley would join us in the office and at facilitations on average, only 1-2 days a week, mostly Miley spent her time roaming our farmland. Unlike other breeds of dogs that are suitable for the office every day, it just would not have been appropriate or fair to have Miley the Huntaway dog in the office, sitting on her bum, five days a week.
A Final Special Tribute to Miley
You were my soulmate, you were unconditional, you were sweet, you were so tolerant, you were funny, you were intuitively kind, you were so very loved - Michael and I miss you every day. xx
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” - Winnie the Pooh
- Mary Buckley
Culture by Design
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