The desired traits of the perfect colleague include strong people skills, good manners, supportive, being a team player and perhaps, four legs, fur and a wagging tail.  The hunt is on for the top working dogs in Aussie businesses – and Canberra canine Bernie is chasing the title.

This Friday, 25 August, winners of the Oz Top Dog competition will be announced. Run by people2people and Indeed, this year’s competition sees 400 dogs in the race to be crowned Top Office Dog and Top Dog with a Job.

Recently celebrating his first birthday, Bernie the border collie has been brightening the Dogs ACT office with his infectiously fun personality. From greeting customers and ensuring the grounds are free from rubbish and pesky birds, Bernie quickly became a valued member of the team and has earned a place in the top 20 finalists for this year’s Top Office Dog category.

“Bernie likes to entertain wherever he can. Usually if he’s up and about, the first person that greets you at the counter is his beautiful little black and white ears and face. He will offer treats to people while I’m doing their paperwork for them,” says Vanessa March, Bernie’s mum and colleague.

From a line of working and sporting dogs, Bernie was one of a litter born to Vanessa’s border collie, Erin. Originally not planning to keep any of the pups, Bernie quickly won the dog lover over, showing his special personality from just three weeks old.

“Whenever I picked him up and handled him from his litter, he would just hang in my hands like a limp noodle – his nickname is noodle. He had a bit of a goofball personality, not always serious, quite easy to have an off switch. Border collies are renowned for being active high-drive dogs, whereas Bernie has quite a good off switch of knowing when enough is enough to calm down and to chill out,” she says.

Vanessa is passionate about her dogs and their sports. With the addition of Bernie to the clan, she owns four border collies that enter in a number of sporting competitions like Flyball, Agility and Tricks.

The push to take Bernie to the office came after a long bond with his litter mate, and Vanessa wanted to encourage a strong bond between her and Bernie. She says that in the wake of the pandemic, many breeders are finding it harder to find the perfect home for their pups. 

“I was finding that he was very much dog-dog social, and I want to dog-human social because I’m going to be doing sports; he needs to look to me and not everybody else or the other dogs,” explains Vanessa. “It was trying to concrete that bond and also build up general confidence of environmental work; different people come in, different smells come in, different noises happen within an office.”

Training a pup at home and the office didn’t come without its difficulties, however, co-workers Linda and Kristin have been supportive the entire way. An office of avid dog lovers, Dogs ACT (the ACT Canine Association Inc.) promotes dogs and responsible pet ownership.

Each day in the office, Bernie’s schedule includes greeting customers, a few toilet stops, and longnaps. He also ensures he focuses on relationship-building with his coworkers, particularly the biscuit lady, Linda, who brings him a treat from the kitchen each morning.

“Her prerequisite for it was we must sit politely and very, very straight. This didn’t take Bernie very long to work out how this works … She would always come back into the office, and he would be sitting tucked in as closely as he can with his back feet straight up and down waiting for that all-important morning biscuit,” Vanessa says.

Part of Bernie’s job is to ensure the grounds are clear of rubbish, a role he takes seriously. Proud to show off his finds, like the Ziploc bag of cigarette butts, or try and steal a sip of coffee from the tossed cups, a quick ‘ta’ from Vanessa will see Bernie surrender his loot.

“If I’ve got treats on my person, I will trade him for it when I take it away. I’ve copped a couple of choice looks from him when I’ve taken something that he really loved, like a piece of dirty old thong after Summernats.”

First seeing the Oz Top Dog competition two years ago, Vanessa didn’t have a likely candidate at her previous job. This year, beautiful Bernie has earned his role as an office dog and she decided to enter him, forgetting about it until they were informed Bernie had made the finals.

“I was like ‘are you kidding me? Really? This is exciting’ … I think it would just be humbling [to win], if anything really, that I can have a dog that can do something other than sports and win stuff. He can look gorgeous and win things,” she smiles.

According to Vanessa, it’s a misconception that working breeds like border collies and kelpies wouldn’t be suited to an office environment. She believes that a lot of it comes down to how you train your pup from a young age.

“A lot of people, they’d go against me for that. I believe there is a degree of how you raise them. He’s allowed to be a dog a lot of the time; he does do his work but also he understands when downtime is downtime and we chill. You get that understanding with them that you can switch off, you can just lay there and do absolutely nothing and the world’s not going to pass you by,” she says.

Keep up to date with Bernie and his family on Instagram at pippa_doo.

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