Hero weighs fifty pounds and his tail clears a work table at exactly the wrong height. This matters when you're pouring hot wax six hours a day.
It mattered more before I reorganized the studio around the reality that I don't work alone. Cooling racks moved to upper shelves. Fragrance bottles relocated to closed cabinets. The pour station now sits against the far wall where there's clearance for a dog who doesn't always remember his tail is attached to his body.
He's a pit bull terrier, or pitty, which means he's lower and more compact than people expect from his weight. It also means he moves through the studio with surprising awareness — learned behavior from months of production days where the rhythm is different from regular days. Mornings when I'm setting up, he stays on his bed against the wall. He knows the sound of the scale, the particular pace of production prep. Once candles are poured and cooling, he'll move closer. Never intrusive, just present.
The studio door stays closed during pours. But once candles are cooling and the work shifts to administrative tasks — labeling, photographing, updating spreadsheets — he's usually nearby. Not because it makes good content, but because this is where we both spend our days.
