Every December, the whole haus packs into one room and Hudson works it like his last pitch of the year. Devon Reyes translated his side of the story: the smells, the reads on who had a good year, and what three Decembers of this have taught one very good dog about the haus he lives in. Consider this the party recap nobody asked a human to write.
The smell hit before anyone said a word
I know the party is coming before the calendar does. It starts days out, a change in the air, cardboard and pine and something buttery baking two rooms over that nobody will let me near yet. By the morning of, the whole office smells like a different building. Wrapping paper. Cinnamon. Whatever Marisol brings that disappears off the table in under four minutes flat every single year, I’ve timed it.
I plant myself by the kitchen the second the catering trays start coming in and I do not move. Not for a client walking in the door. Not even for Houston, who tries the exact same strategy and gets nowhere near as far because he barks at the delivery guy first and blows the whole approach. I’ve learned better. A quiet sit by the counter gets you closer to the cheese plate than noise ever will. Some lessons take a golden retriever a few years to land. That one landed early.
By the time the first guest walks in, I’ve already got three trays memorized by smell alone and a running list of who’s most likely to slip me something under the table when nobody’s watching. Devon usually goes first. Devon always goes first.
“Someone set down a plate of something with bacon on it and walked away for four seconds. Four seconds. I have never respected a decision less.”
Hudson, as told to Devon Reyes
I can tell who had the kind of year
People think dogs only notice food and doors. We notice a lot more than that. I spend most of the party working the room the way Devon works a shot list, watching, figuring out where to plant myself next. And what I read this December, more than any other, is relief with something prouder sitting right underneath it.
I can tell who chased something big all year by how they stand at a party. Loose shoulders. A laugh that comes easy. A second cookie without thinking twice. That’s the group that clusters around whoever’s talking about the certification paperwork the haus has been buried in for a while now, the kind that checks whether the values printed on the wall are actually true. I don’t follow all of it. I follow that the humans who carried that work stood a little taller by December, and a dog notices when a room full of people finally exhales at the same time.
I can tell who spent the year training someone new, too. New desks smell nervous for a few weeks, unfamiliar, careful. Then one December they don’t anymore, and the person who did the training is the one glowing hardest at the party because the new hire finally landed a joke in the room without checking first if it was okay to make it. I watched that exact moment happen more than once this year. I made a point of greeting every new face twice, because somebody has to make the new people feel like they belong here, and that job fell to me a long time ago.
And I can tell who closed something worth closing, because those people hug a little longer at this party and eat standing up because they haven’t sat down all week. There were a few of those hugs this December. I don’t know the client names. I know the smell of a good, hard-won week when it walks through the door and finally lets its shoulders down.
“Three years of watching this dog work a holiday party, and I still learn something about how the haus is doing from thirty seconds of watching who he decides to sit next to. He picks the people who need it most. Every single year, without fail.”
David Keyes, Founder & CEO
Three Decembers in, still the best night of the year
This is the third one of these I’ve sat through. The first time Devon ever wrote anything about me, it was a December piece too, an introduction, somebody finally putting into words what Houston and I had already figured out on our own: we weren’t guests here. We were staff. Unofficial, four-legged, but staff. That was three years ago. I was younger. Houston still fit under the conference table without folding himself in half to manage it.
A lot has happened between that first article and this one. New faces at new desks. Wins worth a long hug at a holiday party. Paperwork that means the haus is actually trying to be the kind of company it says it is, not just the kind that says so on a website. I’ve watched most of it from somewhere around ankle height, which turns out to be a decent seat for keeping track of whether a company is keeping its word.
What hasn’t changed is the party itself, in the way that matters most. Everybody in one room. Nobody performing for anybody else. A dog under every table by nine o’clock and a room full of people who built something real together, standing around eating cookies off paper plates like it’s the easiest thing in the world. It isn’t, most years. Doesn’t stop us from making it look that way every single December.
If Houston’s asleep by the fireplace and I’m still working the room, that technically makes me the one in charge tonight. I intend to hold the title until somebody drops that tray again.
