It's been an exciting couple of months for one of Team Soell's prominent board members. Our own Gus has been working on a project that we've had to keep under wraps for a while, but are finally able to reveal to you all: Gus has broken into the competitive field of paw modeling!

A couple months ago, January saw this update from Anna Dorfman show up in her Twitter stream:

Of course, January quickly responded that we had a lovely border collie who would be delighted to help out. It turns out that Anna is a book cover designer who was responsible for putting together the cover of the latest Chet and Bernie book, To Fetch a Thief. If you aren't familiar with the Chet and Bernie series, as we weren't, it's a young adult series featuring private investigator Bernie Little and his faithful border collie, Chet. Told from Chet's perspective, the duo follows clues and solve crimes. In the first two books in the series, the back cover features close-up photography of Chet: his tail on the first book and his nose on the second. For this book, the third in the series, they wanted an image of a border collie's paw outstretched as if he were instructed to shake

After a couple of emails, Gus officially had the gig and we got to work: A black backdrop was acquired, some lighting was set up, and January took some pictures while I played animal wrangler. Gus was so good about the whole thing. I had to hold his arm out at a somewhat awkward angle to make sure it was well-lit with the black background completely behind it, and he just sat there as polite as could be, looking back and licking me occasionally.

January finally got her shot and we sent it off for approval. A day later we got the word that it was accepted and that the book would be published in the fall. Well, on September 28 Chet and Bernie's third adventure, To Fetch a Thief, was officially published featuring our own Gus on the back cover.

We couldn't be prouder of our little breadwinner. To make sure he knew just how much we appreciated his contribution to the Team Soell economy, we treated him to a new Mexican wrestler chihuahua toy last night. We think he earned it.