GREENFIELD — For some local small-business owners, pets aren’t just best friends — they’re also business partners.
“He’s been working here for about three years,” explained Hamdi Yildiz, owner of Mr. Hamdi’s Tailoring & Tuxedo on Main Street in Greenfield, about his friend, pet and business partner, a long-haired Chihuahua named Wess.
Yildiz started taking Wess into work about four years ago, around the same time he got him. Today, they share a close friendship. While Yildiz works, stitching clothing on a sewing machine, Wess sits on the counter behind him and watches over the shop.
The business offers everything from tux rentals, wedding gowns, to alterations. Yildiz said he “made his first custom-made suit at age 16,” and immigrated to the United States from Turkey in 1989. After working in New York, he moved to Greenfield and took over the business.
“He’s a great employee. When he comes in, he checks the whole shop first. And he’s so friendly! I leave the door open and he never runs away,” Yildiz said about Wess, adding, “his primary duty is sleeping. If I don’t put the blanket on him, he starts crying.”
On the few days Wess doesn’t come in to work, Yildiz said customers notice and ask where he is. In the afternoons, “all the neighbors make appointments to take him on walks. If they don’t come, he gets sad.”
“He’s gonna run the whole business (soon),” Yildiz said with a smile.
Just inside the entrance of Sawyer News Co. in Shelburne Falls Tuesday, Jewell, a 10-year-old long haired German Shepherd, peacefully sleeps.
Sawyer News Co. is the oldest continuously running business in town, founded in 1863.
“There’s a lot of people here who don’t have dogs anymore. They come in here and get their fix,” explained the store’s owner, Ellen Eller, from behind a counter stacked with newspapers adding, “she has her favorites.”
For customers who frequent the store for maps, magazines, etc., Jewell is a familiar sight. Eller said since she purchased the business about 10 years ago, Jewell has become a fixture, serving as an unofficial greeter.
Eller said Jewell enjoys the store’s slow atmosphere, and particularly enjoys interacting with children, because “she’s so low energy.”
Just down the street at Boswell’s Books, Boswell, a 7-year-old cat with black and white markings, sits on a shelf behind the front counter.
“She’s what makes the doorbell jingle,” explained Ken Eistenstein, who co-owns the independent book store with his wife, Nancy Eistenstein, noting that Boswell is a rescue from Dakin Animal Shelter in Leverett.
Before purchasing the business, Eistenstein and his wife worked in Boston as lecture agents, booking speakers at venues around the world. As a way to “semi-retire,” the couple moved to Franklin County and purchased the roughly 30-year-old bookstore 5 years ago.
“We always followed the book trends — that and we’re just huge readers,” he explained, adding, “it keeps me from spending all my social security money on books — which I’d probably be doing.”
Boswell is the fourth cat named Boswell to live in the bookstore. According to Eistenstein, the cat before the current Boswell “was a nightmare.” Once, Einstein said, she had to be fished out of the river. Another time, she slept in a bank vault overnight. He said police were sometimes called because she bit customers. Now, she lives on a farm in Colrain with the bookstore’s previous owners.
When the previous cat left with the owners, Eistenstein said they adopted the new Boswell.
“We lucked out, she’s got the perfect personality for a store cat,” he continued. “Her fame has spread — we have her on the sign out front. Usually, at night, she’s in the window.”
She’s also featured on postcards, T-shirts, and in “Cats on the Job,” a book by Lisa Rogak that highlights working pets. Eistenstein said over the years, the store has received phone calls and inquiries about the bookstore’s cat from cat lovers around the world.
Next door to the bookstore, Molly Cantor, owner of Molly Cantor Pottery, said there’s usually a dog inside the store.
Tuesday, 13-year-old Ruby, a rescue from Dakin Animal Shelter, sat beneath a pottery table chewing a toy, as Cantor and fellow potter Kelly Flaherty worked over clay. Cantor said Ruby alternates coming into work with her other dog, Laura, and Flaherty’s dog, Hazelnut.
“People who like dogs really enjoy it,” Cantor said about her pets’ perpetual presence in the business on Bridge Street. “Kids really enjoy them, they can pet the dogs while their parents shop.”
You can reach Andy Castillo
at: acastillo@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 263.
On Twitter: @AndyCCastillo.