Victor is a distinguished W+K dog, a German Shepherd pointer who loves to play fetch, and who knows all the best locations in the agency to scout for treats. Meet Victor!
Victor’s person, Robin, says that her dog “lives for fetch and retrieve–although it took him a while to realize that seeing people doesn’t also mean playing ball all day.”
Victor’s been coming to the agency since 2007, and in that time he’s developed a funny morning ritual: he knows his way to and from the elevator, and when he arrives he gives a hello bark to his friends. Then he runs over to his friend Jeff for treats.
“He knows all the best locations,” Robin said. “Sometimes he goes to ‘ghost desks’, where there used to be treats, before people moved to another quad or left the company.”
He’s a pretty calm dog, but Robin says there are a few tricks that can turn him into “an insane animal.”
“He’s 90% mellow, but he has his days,” Robin said. “Eric loves to make him crazy. He’ll stand in the Atrium and howl, and Victor will answer.”
Baby Victor
But above all, Victor has a very important role–a therapy dog.
“It’s a stressful job,” Robin said. “A couple of times a day, you can find me under my desk, petting him.”
Puppy Victor doing obedience training
Just last week, Victor had an adventure out in the woods. In Robin’s own words:
This weekend Victor and I went camping. We set out on a hike with 2 friends at Fish Creek off of the Clackamas River in the Mt. Hood National Forest. Victor and I hike quite a bit, and his style is to run up the trail and run back to check on the rest of the group. Run up, run back. Run up, run back.
We were about 1.5 miles in the trail, had made our ascent to about, oh I don’t know, 50 feet above a raging portion of the Clackamas, when Vic just disappeared. I instantly knew he had tried to go down to the river but had no idea about the grade or distance, and probably slid down the cliff (or fell off!).
I spent the rest of the day searching for him on and off the trail and had to give up when it was dark. The next morning I was out again on the trail, at campsites, etc.. Right before we were about to search the trail for a final time a couple came to our campsite.
They were out hiking, the man stopped to look at the view and happened to look down the cliff and saw victor stuck on a ledge at the end of a ravine. He was too scared to go up or down, this wonderful man scaled down and rescued him after 22 hours of being stuck. I have never experienced such sorrow or relief!
And here’s the footage the hikers caught of the rescue!
