A Message From Bruno’s Mom

Hello out there!

Bruno’s not a morning pup, so while he slumbers and I enjoy my second cup of coffee by the woodstove, I thought I would do what any good mom would do, and check in to see what kind of chaos my sweet boy is stirring up while left to his own devices. It’s our little secret though, ok? Please don’t tell him his father and I are actually keeping a close eye on this little experiment of his. You understand I am sure. What’s that phrase? “Do dangerous things safely?” or something like that. That’s pretty much the goal here.

I am certainly reading Bruno’s posts, just not anytime he might catch me ha ha. Which is far easier than you would imagine because our sweet potato is a a big fan of napping. His preferred spot is to nap on a lap. If a lap isn’t available, he will lay on another dog. If they grumble too much then all bets are off. He napped on the dining room table one day. Inside the bathtub another, and on several occassions, under, the bed… “Get a bully they said. It will be fun they said.” Well I would be lying if I said it was anything less than entertaining. In a “hand me my blood pressure medication” kind of way, but that’s not important.

I do realize that while our sweet Bru (which is his actual name by the way. Just Bru. The “No” is a fixture in basically every conversation, but his actual name is Bru) has charisma and personality in bucketfuls, he seems to lack the ability to share any actual information, so I am going to quietly help him out here. Hopefully at some point, he realizes on his own, but I don’t want that to hold him back from accomplishing his goals. Truth be told we would love for him to accomplish his goals, but if he’s not ready, he’s not ready. Time will tell, and while he’s freaking out about only having 42 days, we know for certain it’s plenty of time.

I won’t keep you long, but here’s the full scoop on what’s happening, and why our Brudy Bru is suddenly showing up while you’re scrolling.

Don’t ever tell him, and I will explain more in a future post, but Bruno was not a dog we wanted, and we certainly were not looking to adopt when he found us. That’s not to say that we don’t love him, because we certainly do. However we live in a very small home, and had just finished fostering a pup who we had found living in deplorable conditions while working on a job site. We convinced the owner to surrender her to us and set a plan to keep her safe while we sought out a rescue group to take her in. We figured thirty days, max.

It was not thirty days, it was one hundred and eighteen days, and she never went into a rescue. Luckily we found the most amazing home we ever could have imagined. Her name was (is) Lulu, and our time with her taught us more than we ever could have imagined about how bad the homeless dog crisis is. The more research we did, the more we realized that shelters and rescues are full, animal abuse and abandonment rates are skyrocketing, and adoptions have slowed to a trickle. The cost of living and the uncertainty of the economy was creating a disastrous situation for our furry best friends.

We had to do something.

While Lulu was still with us, we began building the idea behind Sit Stay Live Here. We know how important social impact marketing is for small businesses, and the goal was to create an affordabe and effective marketing solution exclusively available to small businesses that would drive traffic, engage customers, create brand loyalty, boost reputation, and increase profits. A marketing opportunity this fantastic would be in high demand, and we could make giving back a core element of our business mission.

We began work on this project about sixty days before Lulu went to her forever home. On the drive home from her adoption day we sighed in relief. We loved her, were so happy we had invested the time, money, and effort, but we were tired. It had been an exhausting experience that left us in tears and frustrated more times than we could count, but the end result is all that mattered.

“We would do this again, wouldn’t we?” I asked my other half on the way home. He laughed and shook his head as he replied “You know we would, but maybe not anytime soon ok?”

The universe had other plans.

It was a week to the day since little Lulu went to her forever home and Bruno came crashing into our lives. He was left tied to a fence, ears dripping with infection, paws red and inflamed so badly he winced to walk. He was a bull in a china shop, with zero sense of his size, 100% not housetrained, and a voracious appetite for anything except his food and suffered from the loudest and most destructive separation anxiety we have ever seen.

Bruno’s cute face would in no way save him, and we knew he would end up abandoned, or worse.

So he stayed.

It’s been almost a year now and we can’t imagine life without him. We are more minimalist than ever before (not by choice) but his loving and goofy spirit makes it all worth it, Bru LOVES people. He LOVES exploring, and he LOVES when people fawn all over him. In public, he’s a perfect angel. Well behaved, listens, obedient, and so stinking cute. At home… well. He’s loved ha ha.

Bruno may have slowed down the speed of launching the SitStayLiveHere.com interactive directory but he also reaffirmed how important it is. Over the past year we have finalized every detail, and that included giving Bruno a starring role in the game itself. Here’s the game overview in case you haven’t visited the website yet.

SSLH Interactive Directory & Scavenger Hunt

Annual business memberships may be purchased by small businesses with a physical location in Connecticut. These businesses are listed online in the interactive directory and given QR codes to place on display inside the business (instructions will be provided to the businesses re: which to display and when). Players visit SSLH businesses and scan the QR code to find out if Bruno has or has not been seen recently. If Bruno has not been seen then players are directed to snap a photo inside the business that might entice Bruno to visit. They earn an entry into the monthly prize drawing for doing so. If the QR code tells them that Bruno has been seen recently then players will search the store for clues, or for Bruno himself. The first player to find Bruno wins a prize, and players who find clues will be entered into a separate prize drawing.

Funding from business memberships will be used to build, install, stock, and maintain free dog food supply cupboards across the state. These cupboards will be hosted by local SSLH business partners and help ensure that community dogs are getting the food they need, as well as the opportunity to request additional help for specific services like spaying / neutering, flea / tick prevention, medical bills, boarding, training, etc. Since we will be building these cupboards, we won’t have the same amount of time to take Bruno exploring all these small businesses that he loves. He thinks he’s old enough, and responsible enough to explore on his own, we aren’t convinced.

We already have a little Bruno statue that will represent him in the scavenger hunt, and we fully expect to use this little statue to represent “finding Bruno” HOWEVER we don’t want to dull his enthusiasm, and want to encourage him to pursue something he is passionate about, so we told him that if we feel enough people are looking out for him while he explores, that we would let him explore on his own.

That’s why he’s spending so much time writing to you all and trying to get you to like the Facebook page, and learn about the game. Except he’s forgetting to give you any details beyond himself ha ha.

If you want to support Bruno, you can sign up for the newsletter that is on the home page of www.SitStayLiveHere.com (scroll to the bottom). Signing up tells us that you will keep an eye out for him and will help us make a decision January 1st.

We also could really use some help spreading the word to small businesses. All the details about the SSLH business membership are HERE and we would love it if you would share with your favorite small business. They truly need affordable and effective marketing solutions so this is a life saver for them!

I am going to see if there is a way you can sign up to get notfied when Bruno posts a blog. I’ll research that and post back soon. Anyways that’s more than enough from me. I just wanted to give him a boost and help fill in some details. If you have questions for me, or fan mail for our favorite potato, you can email me at Bruno@sitstaylivehere.com.

Thanks everyone! Enjoy your day! - Bruno’s mom