The cousins came to town, and the haus got louder in the best way. Sapphy and Hachi, dogs belonging to founder David Keyes's sisters, joined Hudson and Houston for a full Long Beach field trip: waterfront walk, coffee shop stop, and a workday that stopped being productive around eleven and nobody minded.
The cousins are in town
Word got around the office by nine in the morning: Sapphy and Hachi were coming. David’s sisters were in Long Beach for the week, and the dogs were coming with them, which meant the haus was about to have a full house. Hudson and Houston have run this place since day one. Adding two more dogs to the mix wasn’t a distraction from the workday. It was the workday, at least for the next few hours.
We closed the laptops a little early and called it a field trip. Not an official one, nothing on the calendar, no client attached. Just four dogs, a handful of people who wanted an excuse to walk somewhere with a view, and a stretch of Long Beach waterfront that doesn’t care what your job title is.
Sapphy: the one who watches everything
Sapphy is the calm one. She arrived, took a slow lap of the office, and found a patch of floor by the window where she could see the door, the desks, and everyone in the room at once. She didn’t ask for attention. She just observed, the way a good editor reads a draft twice before saying a word.
That’s the personality that showed up all day. On the walk, Sapphy kept pace without pulling, checking in with a glance every so often like she was making sure the group was still headed the right direction. At the coffee shop, she settled under the table and stayed there, unbothered by the espresso machine, the strangers, the general noise of a Tuesday morning in Long Beach. Hudson wanted to greet every person who walked past. Sapphy wanted to watch him do it.
“Sapphy has this way of making a room feel steadier just by being in it. She’s not shy, she’s just paying attention. We could use more of that energy in a Monday morning meeting.”
David Keyes, Founder & CEO
Hachi: the one who starts the chaos
Then there’s Hachi. If Sapphy is the observer, Hachi is the reason nobody gets bored. She was three steps out of the car before her feet touched the ground, and from there it was a straight sprint into everything: Houston’s water bowl, someone’s shoelaces, a seagull that had no idea what was coming for it. Hachi doesn’t walk into a room. She arrives in it.
The waterfront walk turned into Hachi’s personal parade route. She wanted to smell every bench, greet every stranger, and investigate every trash can within leash range, usually all three at once. By the time we hit the coffee shop, she’d made friends with two strangers, startled a pigeon into a full aerial retreat, and somehow convinced Houston to abandon his usual composure and join the chase. Organized chaos, with swagger and heart, on four legs times two.
“Hachi walks in and the whole day gets more interesting. She’s not causing trouble, she’s just operating at a different speed than the rest of us. Honestly, some days that’s exactly the energy a brainstorm needs.”
Devon Reyes, Motion & Photography Lead
Four dogs, one haus, zero regrets
What made the day work wasn’t that it was smooth. It wasn’t. Leashes got crossed twice. Hachi tried to climb into a stranger’s stroller. Sapphy refused to leave a particularly good patch of shade outside the coffee shop, and the whole group waited her out rather than fight it. None of that felt like a problem. It felt like exactly what we mean when we say this haus runs on organized chaos with swagger and heart. The plan bends. The people, and the dogs, don’t stop having a good time.
Hudson and Houston have always been proof that a workplace doesn’t have to choose between serious craft and genuine joy. Sapphy and Hachi showed up and confirmed it doesn’t take a permanent desk to belong here either. Family counts. Visitors count. A good Tuesday with four dogs on the Long Beach waterfront counts as much as any strategy session on the books, because both are the same thing in the end: people who care about each other, building something worth showing up for.
More cousins, more field trips
This won’t be the last time Sapphy and Hachi make the trip down. Consider this the start of their own thread in the haus story, one calm observer and one high-energy troublemaker, dropping in whenever the family’s in town and reminding everyone here that the culture team was never just Hudson and Houston. It’s bigger than that. It always was.
