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Allison bREINER pOTTER
Workplace Ivy Cottage | Job Title Foot Warmer
Most days at the famed Ivy Cottage, you’ll find
Daffodil under the front desk. The store’s owner,
Sam Dunn, says Daffodil waits there until she’s
ready for some attention, then pops out to walk
around the shop a bit.
Daffodil’s personality, sweet and demure, suggests royal
upbringing, but this charming mutt actually hails from a trailer
park in South Carolina. “I bought her while I was at an auction.
Someone was selling puppies there — half poodle and half some-thing
else,” says Dunn. “I’m not sure what kind of dog she is. Her
personality is a little crazy, but mostly sweet.”
Daffodil, now grown to 17 pounds, has been accompanying
Dunn to the Ivy Cottage since she was just a six-week-old puppy.
“She grew up here. I even had an employee who would bring her
infant, the same age as Daffodil, in to work,” remembers Dunn.
“The two little ones would sleep together behind my desk.”
Maybe it’s because her formative months were spent with a
little human friend that Daffodil is so good with children today.
Name Daffodil
Owner Sam Dunn
“Neighborhood kids come to visit her. And on our breaks we walk
around to let her visit people she knows who live and work on the
streets around the store,” says Dunn. “She’s pretty well known.”
In fact, The Ivy Cottage is well known for its furry assistants
— Dunn lets employees bring in their canines from time to time.
You’ll often find Winston, the Maltese, in the jewelry department
and Stinker Bell, the little 2 ½-pound Chihuahua, in Building 2.
There used to be a rescued Italian Greyhound named Rosie in
building three, but she retired.
Dunn says that on work days, when Daffodil realizes it’s time
to go in, she gets very perky. At work, she sets the tone for that
vintage, Ivy Cottage-relaxed-shopping atmosphere by snoozing
behind Dunn’s desk. When it’s time for a snack, she promotes
customer interaction by letting shoppers bring her a cookie.
And she is welcoming and responsive when people come in to
see her, under the guise of shopping at the store. Dunn under-stands.
“She’s so friendly and sweet. People have to come in for a
pick-me-up.”
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
Joshua Curry