Somebody handed our dogs a stack of handmade valentines and a job to do. What followed was thirty minutes of gentle chaos, one interrupted client call, and proof that our culture team still runs on instinct over instructions. Here's how Valentine's Day went down at the haus.
The idea nobody thought through
It started with a stack of paper hearts and a bad idea. Someone on the team, and we’re still not naming names, cut a dozen valentines out of red cardstock the night before and decided Hudson and Houston should be the ones to deliver them. No plan for how a golden retriever and a bernedoodle were supposed to hand-deliver anything. No plan for what happens when a client call is live in the next room. Just two dogs, a leash of paper hearts taped loosely to a harness, and full confidence in the bit.
We should have known better. This is the same haus that let Houston steal a marker mid-brainstorm and called it culture. Of course we were going to hand these two a job with zero adult supervision and call it Valentine’s Day.
Hudson takes the job seriously, mostly
Hudson treated the valentine route like it was the most important delivery of his career. Every desk got a full-body greeting first, tail going, both paws occasionally landing somewhere they shouldn’t, and then, eventually, a slightly damp paper heart dropped somewhere in the vicinity of the recipient. Accuracy was not the point. Enthusiasm was the point, and on that measure he cleared every bar in the building.
He made it three desks deep before he decided the valentines were less interesting than the people holding them, which tracks. Hudson has never once cared about the assignment. He cares about the room. The valentines mostly ended up on the floor, which is fine, because nobody in this haus is going to be upset about a golden retriever choosing connection over paperwork.
“Hudson’s version of ‘playing cupid’ was just him being Hudson with a prop taped to him. He greeted twelve people like they were each the love of his life and then forgot the hearts existed. Honestly, that might be more romantic than anything I could’ve written on that cardstock.”
Devon Reyes, Motion & Photography Lead
Houston crashes the client call
Houston, meanwhile, had other plans. He made it exactly as far as the glass conference room, saw a live client call in progress through the window, and decided that was where the real audience was. He nosed the door open before anyone could stop him, walked straight to the middle of the table, and sat down like he’d been invited.
The client, to her enormous credit, laughed. Loudly. On camera. Houston sat there holding one crumpled valentine in his mouth like it was the most natural thing in the world, and for about ten seconds, the entire strategy conversation just stopped so everyone could appreciate the bernedoodle in the room. We apologized. She said it was the best part of her week. We’re choosing to take that as a win for the brand, not just the dog.
“I was mid”
sentence about brand positioning when a bernedoodle walked in holding a valentine like a peace offering. I’ve sat through a lot of pitches. That one I remember. If that’s not proof that a little chaos builds trust faster than a perfect deck, I don’t know what is." — David Keyes, Founder & CEO
Organized chaos, exactly as advertised
Nobody planned Valentine’s Day to go this way, and that’s kind of the whole point. We talk a lot about building with conviction instead of playing it safe, and most days that shows up in strategy decks and brand systems. Some days it shows up as a golden retriever forgetting his own mission and a bernedoodle crashing a client call with a valentine in his mouth. Both count. Both are the haus, working exactly as intended.
By the end of the morning, half the valentines were on the floor, one was slightly chewed, and every single person in the office had a story to tell. That’s a better return than we get from most campaigns, honestly. We wouldn’t trade it.
