The pack multiplies for summer

Every summer, the haus gets a little louder. Sapphy and Hachi, the cousin dogs who first crashed our world back in 2023, return to Long Beach for a few months of sun, salt air, and supervised chaos. They belong to David’s sisters, which technically makes them guests. Nobody in the office treats them that way. By the second week of June, their leashes are hanging by the front door next to Hudson’s and Houston’s like they never left.

The personalities haven’t changed, and we wouldn’t want them to. Sapphy is still the calm one, the observer who sizes up a room before she commits to entering it. Hachi is still the trouble, the one who greets every open door like it’s an invitation and every closed one like it’s a personal insult. Put them together on a Tuesday afternoon and you get the full range of what a good team actually needs: someone who watches, someone who moves.

“Hachi treats every walk like it’s the first walk he’s ever taken. Sapphy treats it like she’s already seen the whole route from the car.”

David Keyes, Founder & CEO, HAUS XXIV

Waterfront walks and patio lunches

Long Beach in the summer is built for a dog with opinions, and Hachi has plenty. Our afternoons off have a rhythm to them now. We walk the waterfront when the marine layer hasn’t burned off yet, the kind of gray-gold morning light that makes even a parking lot look like it belongs in a mood board. Sapphy paces herself, checking in every few yards like she’s making sure the group is still intact. Hachi checks in with nobody. He has already met three strangers, one skateboarder, and a very patient pelican by the time the rest of us catch up.

Lunch happens on whatever patio will have four humans and two dogs without complaint. Long Beach has more of those than people give it credit for, which is part of why we keep building here instead of somewhere with better weather and worse character. Hachi works the table like he invented the concept of begging. Sapphy sits under it, waiting, because she has learned that patience gets more table scraps than noise does. She is, as always, correct.

The shoot they weren’t invited to

We had a sunset shoot scheduled on the peninsula, gear out, light dying fast, the kind of window you don’t get twice in one evening. Nobody remembers exactly how it happened, but somewhere between setting up the reflector and checking the first frame, Sapphy and Hachi were both in it. Hachi had wandered directly into the shot, tail up, absolutely certain he was the subject. Sapphy held back at the edge of the frame, watching the whole production with the expression of someone who has seen enough shoots to know how this goes.

We kept the frame. It’s better than the one we planned.

“We didn’t invite them to the shoot. They showed up anyway and stole the last frame.”

Devon Reyes, Motion & Photography Lead, HAUS XXIV

That’s more or less the story of the whole summer. We plan the walk, the lunch, the shot, and the dogs make it theirs. It’s not a distraction from the work. Some of the best textures we’ve captured this year came from ten minutes we weren’t planning to shoot at all, because Hachi decided the light was worth interrupting for.

Still part of the crew

There’s a version of this story where the dogs are a mascot, a mood board accessory, something for the feed and nothing more. That’s not what this is. Sapphy and Hachi show up in strategy sessions under the desk, in client calls as background noise nobody minds, in the group chat when someone needs a reason to smile at 4 p.m. on a Thursday. They’re part of how the haus actually feels day to day, not a bit we perform for the camera.

Three summers in, the pattern holds. Sapphy still reads the room before she joins it. Hachi still assumes every room was built for him. Long Beach still gives them both plenty of waterfront to prove it. We wouldn’t build the summer any other way, and neither, clearly, would they.