When we first met Lola Barksdale,  she was a tiny Frenchie puppy in our Kindergarten classes. We had no idea that she would become an Instagram star, or that she was secretly obsessed with unicorns and alpacas, loved purple fruit loops and waffles (which she calls "woofles,"), considered herself a "floofdragon" and had hobbies including interior decorating and counting her own feet. The genius behind her account is her human, Rachel Rednor. Rachel works in finance, but during her bathroom breaks at the office, she has developed an entire character for her little dog, built through photos and captions.  Annie talked to Rachel about creating, and managing, her dog's Internet celebrity. 

Notes:  @lolabarksdale - twitter.com/dog_feelings - #sukiisadopted - French Bulldog Club Of America - Music: Ukulele cover of "Play a Simple Melody" by JazzBanjoRex

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Partial Transcript:

Annie:

I am here with Rachel Redner. I met Rachel and her husband, Matt about six years ago when they did a lesson with me with their brand new puppy. Lola, who is this tiny, fawn colored, would you say?



Rachel:

I, we call her cream.



Annie:

Cream French bulldog, who was just, just the cutest little like potato of a dog. [laughing] She has like no neck, which adds to her adorableness, I think. And, they actually started doing classes when School for the Dogs was located in my apartment, which is where we are right now.  In a previous iteration, it was the School for the Dogs classroom. And I wanted to talk to Rachel for this episode because, I think even before dogs on Instagram were sort of a thing, she had an account for Lola on Instagram.  And I started following it and just sort of became obsessed with Lola's Instagram and was like, who is this person writing it? I mean, I knew it was Rachel, but it wasn't, it wasn't the voice of the woman who works in finance, who I had met in her apartment. It was the voice of this hilarious, um, tiny French bulldog. And I think a lot of people kind of develop a voice for their dogs, but I think, you do it better than most. So why don't we talk quickly? Just tell me about how Lola came into your life.



Rachel:

Sure. So my husband and I had different views on a dog in general. I had grown up with a dog and he grew up in a very animal free house and was not that interested in the idea of a dog, but I was very persistent. And when we moved to Manhattan, there were Frenchies. That started to be everywhere. They weren't as kind of everywhere as they are now, but they were--



Annie:

Where did you move from?



Rachel:

We moved from college. We met in Syracuse and then we moved to the city. Uh, we were local. We grew up here, but not really in Manhattan.  You know, so you don't get that much exposure to all the different breeds of dogs when you're living in the suburbs. So we moved to Manhattan and we started seeing Frenchies and I had thought I wanted a beagle. And then I read somewhere one time and it was, this was all, it took me that beagles are terrible in the city because they just have their nose to the ground.  And it's really, really hard to manage that. So I said, okay, let's forget.



But we started seeing Frenchies everywhere. And I don't remember if we looked it up or we just talked about it, but we started this obsession that just kind of grew. And the worst of it was we would follow people with Frenchies around the city.



Full transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts/

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