Take your pet to work week is June 17 – 21 and wouldn’t it be great if you could take our best friend to work with you? Workplace culture is changing on this issue, more people are taking their pets to work with them, and employers are seeing surprising results. A study conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) found that employees who brought their dog to work had low-stress levels compared to people who left their dog’s at home. Dogs in the office also meant more interaction between employees. Coworkers don’t usually interact with each other beforehand use the dog as a catalyst for communication. The mental break of interacting with the dogs allows time to de-stress before returning to their tasks at hand with a refreshed outlook and energy. Luckily, working in the pet industry my dogs are constantly at my side and we encourage others to bring their dogs to the office. If you are lucky enough to be the one making decisions at the office maybe this is the right time to experiment with allowing pets to come to the office. If you need help presenting the case to your boss the benefits include: Decreasing stress, Increased communication between the team and departments, happier employees and improved culture.