A few years back, I had no idea animals were famous on Instagram. I had just adopted a senior dog named Chloe from a friend’s aging grandmother and thought it would be fun to keep her previous family up to date on her new life with me. On a whim I decided to use Instagram for this and after a 30 second consult with a friend, called it Chloe Kardoggian, having never watched the Kardashians in my life aside from a few minutes here and there on vacation with a friend who enjoyed them.
Dorie and Chloe
Soon enough, people I’d never met were following the account and I was having a lot of fun using it as a creative outlet for my humor and imagination. The following was growing through the thousands and then through the tens of thousands and so on and so on… I’ll never forget some of the young sales assistants at my then-job giving me the run-down on dogs I HAD to follow on Instagram because I was clueless.
Then one day I was contacted by a newly established senior dog rescue called Susie’s Senior Dogs about an interview on the subject of senior rescue. After work one day I grabbed up Chloe and thought I was on my way to Central Park to meet a sweet old HUMAN lady named Susie who loved senior dogs and wanted to chat about it. Who I found was a woman named Erin (it was the dog that was named Susie), who was about a decade my junior and loved senior rescue and was looking to change the way people felt about it.
You see, I had always rescued older dogs and it never quite occurred to me the stigma they faced in the shelter system… To me they were the best dogs; the training wheels were off, they didn’t want to chew everything, they were more settled, etc…
My eyes opened to the mission at hand, and having a dog whose platform could be used to deliver a message that could save lives, open minds and still use smiles to do so… I was on a new course.