The Dog Park. Laura Caldwell

magazine loves the idea of the dog in the shoot! Calling you...

      “You know, it’s hard being a black politician,” Victory said when I answered. She rarely made use of hellos, something I liked about her, and she nearly always said something random without explanation. “Do you think DeeDee needs a bath?” she asked.

      “Everyone needs a blow out,” I said. “When was the last time she was groomed?”

      “Two months.”

      “Then for a photo shoot? It’s time.”

      “Any chance I can hire you to style her?” Victory asked.

      I thought about the work in the office, much of it buried under boxes of materials that had arrived just an hour before. Still, this was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to stay open to. It was, I realized, the exact kind of work I wanted to expand into. Dog styling—probably not much work out there but even less competition.

      “Absolutely,” I said to Victory. “I’ll find a grooming appointment. And I’ll pick her up.”

      “God love you. And however you want her fur to look is good for me,” Victory said. “I’ll pay you your usual.”

      “Sounds good,” I said. “What is Dee wearing?”

      “Wearing? Like her collar? It’s the same one you saw last year.”

      “The olive green one?”

      “Yeah. It’s cute, right?”

      “I think you want her to show a little sass.”

      “Good point,” Victory said. “What’s your thought?”

      I’d been sitting at the kitchen table, but I stood and headed for the office. “Do you see her in a baby-pink?”

      “No,” Victory said. “I can’t look like a socialite with a purse dog.”

      “One that’s already called DeeDee.”

      “Precisely,” she said.

      “Got it.” I picked up a few more things. “I’ll have options.”

      We hung up, and I lifted a purple canvas strap with lime-green trim.

      By the time I got to the photo shoot that afternoon, I’d made a few other collars and harnesses. As they were styling Victory’s office, I showed her the various collars I’d made or brought.

      Melody, Victory’s thirteen-year-old, came home from school and helped us narrow the collars down further to the preppy purple-and-green one and a playful lavender one with white suns. We put both of them on DeeDee.

      “Notice what you’re wearing?” I pointed to Victory’s own wrist, where she wore a watch and a bracelet. “The two at once?”

      Victory looked down. “They look good together.”

      “Right,” I said. “So do hers. Let’s leave her in both collars.”

      “Yeah!” Victory’s daughter said, and snapped a photo. “I’m posting this.”

      “You know she has more followers than I do?” Victory said as we walked DeeDee to the set.

      “Your daughter? How is that possible?”

      “She’s in this youth choir that has played all over the country. She drives traffic to me.”

      The photographer liked the two collars, liked the texture and color it leant the photo.

      Victory’s daughter took another picture during the photo shoot.

      My dog, Dee Dee, is so cool, the Tweet said. She’s Superdog #2, then just #Superdog.

      That photo and the comments were reTweeted by Melody’s friends and Victory and her followers, and then the hashtag Superdog started getting repeated, which just fueled the story. Pet owners raced to post a pic of their own pup so they could claim to be something like Superdog #87. Or Superdog #114. Always they ended it simply #Superdog. Quickly the race ramped up and people were bragging that their dog was in the top thousand, then the top ten thousand. Soon, #Superdog was trending again.

      It multiplied and multiplied. And multiplied. And, at least for a while, I felt very, very alive.