BANTER PETS
Tom Simpson, owner of Community Happy Dogs, walks up to 10 dogs at a time.
New Tricks
Chevy Chase’s Tom Simpson left marketing to launch a dog-walking business BY DAWN KLAVON Talk about office politics.
In Tom Simpson’s work space, Babson thinks he can charm his way out of anything, Bobby will talk your ear off and Poppy seems a little shy. Happ gets along with everyone, Fenway is the group’s social butterfly and Charley just wants to fit in. Simpson, 62, works with four-legged customers as part of Community Happy Dogs, his dog-walking company. Serving Chevy Chase, Bethesda and Northwest Washington, D.C., Simpson’s thriving business transforms dogs from haphazard tree sniffers to a harmonic symphony of docile canines, gliding down posh residential streets to the steady clip-clop of nails clicking the ground, up to 10 at a time. So well-trained is his posse that even when another barking dog passes by the group, not one pup makes a sound—or a move—in response. “Tom’s refined it to a science,” says client Elizabeth Wilner of Chevy Chase, whose 2-year-old English Labrador, Happ, walks with Simpson on weekdays. “He’s somewhat of a neighborhood phenomenon.” Simpson closed shop on his previous company, Marketing Now Inc., to launch Community Happy Dogs in 2018. The Chevy
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Simpson recommends walking dogs for 30 minutes first thing in the morning.
PHOTOS BY HANNELE LAHTI
4/10/23 4:20 PM