ARCHIE

LABRADOODLE ARCHIE is enormous and as silvery and fluffy as a cloud before a spring storm. If you are on the other side of his front window, he is just as bold. But upon meeting a new person face-to-face, this guy is super shy. He hides behind a chair and observes newcomers with suspicion and an unbearably sweet face. “If you sit down, he will warm up to you faster,” says his owner Nicholas Scott apologetically. On most evenings, Archie and Scott, along with Scott’s roommate Dustin Sherman and his dog Kennedy (whose unbridled friendliness more than makes up for her buddy’s standoffishness) run as a jubilant pack through their L Streets neighborhood. The thing about Archie is, he is up for just about anything. He runs wherever the others lead (even with that fluffy coat, even in the stifling heat), swims in White Rock Lake and never objects to donning costumes or funny hats on holidays or birthdays, because the humans seem to like that. Scott and Sherman concur that life without dog is just sad. Scott says that after his longtime canine companion Tucker died, which was “horrible,” he went about a year without a dog, mostly because his sales job required extensive travel. He adopted month-old Archie four years ago. Archie was ecstatic when Kennedy moved in, the humans say. “He isn’t always that crazy about people,” Scott concedes, “but he loves other dogs.”