Wednesday, September 5, 2018 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, September 5, 2018 // The Statement

5B
How a local service dog became the

University’s unofficial mascot

by Avi Sholkoff, Daily Sports Writer
A

lexandra Ngo, who graduat-
ed in 2018, sat with Michael
Sola in the Michigan Union
Billiards Room, where Ngo
worked, watching Vine compilations one
night in Spring 2017. Sola, a local retiree
and Pembroke Welsh corgi owner, found
the Vines both amusing and perhaps a bit
bewildering. They were seemingly ridic-
ulous videos that garnered hundreds of
thousands of views.
Ngo joked anyone could post pretty
much anything online, which they could
then monetize and popularize — like
Sola’s dog, Reggie, for example.
“You can make a Facebook page,” Ngo
told him. “Something where people can
follow Reggie.”
It was at this moment in the now-
defunct Billiards Room that the former
junior excitedly helped Sola establish an
avid following on campus.
The plan was to construct a Facebook
profile for Reggie Bee, Sola’s eight-year-
old corgi that Ngo had grown to love
through moments like these in the Bil-
liards Room and her own interest in cor-
gis.
And thus, from a spontaneous Vine-
watching session, the online profile of
the University’s famous dog — and some
would argue mascot — came to be.
Now, nearly a year-and-a-half later,
everyone knows Reggie: student organi-
zations use him on their brochures, pho-

tos of him proliferate social media and,
of course, he appears in a multitude of
memes.
Sola loves it. For the semi-professional
photographer, taking pictures of Univer-
sity students at some of their happiest
moments, with his dog Reggie, brings
him great joy.
Searching for a dog to help him if he
ever faced a life-threatening event, Sola
— an Air Force veteran who served out-
side of San Francisco during the Vietnam
War — adopted Reggie six years ago and
had him trained as a service dog. Because
of a heart condition, Sola would rely on
Reggie’s assistance should an event put
Sola in danger.
Sola’s first searches for a cute canine
companion proved fruitless. However,
after speaking with a corgi rescue, Sola
made up his mind to adopt one.
“There (was) a corgi up in Gaylord and
so I called up there and the lady said to
come on up,” Sola recalled. “So I went up
to Gaylord, and I met Reggie, Reggie’s
older sister Sandy Dee and two other
labs. And this lady has had Reggie since
he was a baby. She said she’s held him in
her arms when he was a baby and actu-
ally fed him with a little bottle. He’s a
well-liked dog, has all his shots and she
has lived with him all his life. He was two
years old and she had too many dogs so
she needed to find someone who would
take Reggie.”

Sola would be that person — to nurture
and provide him an environment, and
eventually an entire University student
body, that would care for him deeply.
However, Reggie’s primary role is to
be a service dog for Sola — to help him in
case of an emergency if he happened to
be alone or could not use his cell phone.
“If I start to have a heart event, if I’m
in a park or something like that, he will
go get me help,” Sola said. “He will run
and go get somebody and they will know
to follow him. He’s trained to do that.”
The possibility of needing to save Sola’s
life is also why Reggie doesn’t require a
leash. Sola explained most service dogs
can’t be off leash.
According to the Americans with Dis-
abilities Act website, service animals
must be harnessed unless it impedes the
animal’s job. Such is the case for Reg-
gie. University police know Reggie well
enough now that they don’t question why
he is off a leash.
“Reggie was trained to be off leash
because if he’s running through the park
and gets his leash caught on something,
that shuts the whole show down right
there,” Sola said.
Fortunately, Sola has never experi-
enced a horrific event that would require
Reggie to save his life, but he claims Reg-
gie helps everyday with companionship
or if he hurts his foot, for example. Reg-
gie will hear his voice and come immedi-
ately to aid his owner.
“He’ll start licking and he’ll jump
right up in my chair,” Sola said. “He’s so
attuned to what I’m feeling, it’s unbeliev-
able. He’ll offer support. He’s basically
coming up and licking my face because
he wants to support me.”
But most importantly and profoundly
for Sola, Reggie has been a positive force
on the student body. He said it is his
favorite part about spending time with
Reggie.
Since he first created the Facebook
page in March 2017, students eagerly run
across campus to pet Reggie, the cuddly
campus corgi, and for just a few minutes
forget about the stresses of coursework,
extracurriculars and social struggles.
Rackham student Flynn Darby sur-
prised his corgi-loving girlfriend, Kinesi-
ology alum Andrea Kooistra, by bringing
Reggie and Sola to her birthday last Octo-
ber. Medical student Mark-Anthony Lin-
gaya purchased his own corgi puppy and
received extensive advice from Sola on

where to purchase it. For others, seeing
Reggie simply brightens their day.
“Reggie created his own group here,
he fulfills a need,” Sola said. “There’s a
student body here and they need a dog
like Reggie. I usually just want the inter-
action to be between them and Reggie,
because that’s therapy. That’s why we
call him the therapy dog. I want them to
have that experience.”
S

ola became interested in photog-
raphy when he traveled through-
out Asia, going to Vietnam,
Thailand and the Philippines, taking por-
traits of both the scenery and people he
met. His appreciation for photographing
the everyday scenery overseas carried
over to his life and passions in Ann Arbor.
For Sola, there isn’t anything drasti-
cally different about what he’s been doing
during the past year and a half. Despite
the creation of the Facebook page and
students’ affinity toward his dog, he’s
doing what he’s been doing for the past
six years — walking around campus with
Reggie.
When Ngo helped him develop the
Facebook page, he had no idea how pop-
ular it would become — it eventually
reached Facebook’s cap for 5,000 friends
by the midpoint of summer 2017.
“I’ve been bringing him on campus
and he goes virtually everywhere I go,”
Sola said. “He’d walk around without the
leash so (the students would) find this
corgi, and say, ‘Wow what’s this?’… The
common question even now is, ‘Do you
own that dog?’”
Sola said he often jokes in response by
saying, “Do you own that dog?”
Ngo, too, was particularly surprised
how rapidly Reggie gained popularity on
campus.
“I thought it would be popular for a
couple days,” Ngo said. “I didn’t antici-
pate Reggie continuously being a meme.
I never thought everybody would be like,
‘Oh my god! It’s Reggie.’”
Ngo, who worked in the Billiards Room
at the Union all throughout college, met
Sola her freshman year, calling him one
of a handful of regulars who frequented
the historic spot on campus.
Sola was the first to initiate a conver-
sation during Ngo’s freshman year after
seeing her laptop covered from top to
bottom with corgi stickers.
“Michael finally walked up and said,
‘Wait a second, I have a corgi,’” Ngo said.
“We kept talking about how it’s so easy

to get on campus and distract (passers-
by), just because so many people want to
pet their dog when they’re walking. You
know someone is going to stop and talk to
you. And that’s when I mentioned, ‘You
should honestly walk him through cam-
pus and you never know how many stu-
dents will stop by.’”
In the years leading up to the creation
of the Facebook page, Ngo said, Sola loved
seeing how happy Reggie made everyone
around campus.
“That’s when I finally said, ‘You really
should make a Facebook page or some-
thing. You’d get so much more show for
your photography.’”
F

lynn Darby knew how much his
girlfriend Andrea Kooistra loved
corgis and Reggie in particular.
She is a member of multiple corgi Face-
book groups and loves seeing Reggie on
campus. Consequently, he invited Sola
to participate in Kooistra’s 21st birthday
festivities.
While Kooistra had seen and spent a
great deal of time with Reggie on cam-
pus, Darby’s first encounter with Reg-
gie was when he threw her the surprise
birthday party.
“It was a surprise,” Darby said. “And 15
minutes before party started, (Sola) came
and then Andrea had 15 minutes of Reg-
gie to herself. She took lots of pictures
and then everyone came over and had a
great time. (Sola and Reggie) ended up
staying for about a half hour.”
Sola has seen Reggie’s impact to a dif-
ferent extent on campus; he says that
he has begun to see more corgis around
campus and knows three different Ann
Arbor community members people who
have purchased corgis since meeting
Reggie.
One such person was Lingaya, who
sought Sola’s advice about where to find
a dog. Lingaya had always wanted a dog
growing up but never had one of his own.
It wasn’t until he neared graduation that
he began to look into buying a puppy.
Sola offered advice on where to search
(on Facebook) and the types of breeders
(those who breed for temperament) to
seek out. These tips proved invaluable
when Lingaya finally found King, his six-
month-old puppy. King and Reggie have
met multiple times and, according to Lin-
gaya, are great friends.
Lingaya and Sola bonded because, as
Lingaya recalls, they spoke about spend-
ing time in the Philippines where Lingaya
lived for a few years and Sola had visited
on vacation. Lingaya always loved seeing
Reggie and as a result became closer with
Sola, too.
“One day when I saw him I went up
to him and said, ‘Oh you have the cutest
dog ever,’” Lingaya said. “I talked to him
when I decided I really wanted to get a
puppy and so I went to him with those
questions of where to get one.”
Lingaya said Sola was extremely help-
ful and receptive.
“He even checked in to see how the

process was going in terms of looking for
the puppy, which I really appreciated,”
he said. “You could also tell he was really
looking out for me because he didn’t want
me to fall into trap to the scams that hap-
pen when you get a new puppy.”
Business senior Maureen Wu is always
excited to see Reggie on campus.
“I like Reggie because it’s nice to see
a cute and friendly face on the middle of
the Diag,” Wu said. “He and his owner
are always super friendly.”
Engineering senior Justin Pawloski
loves seeing Reggie because he said it
brings him joy and fulfillment.
“Reggie inspired me to be who I am
today,” Palowski said. “He’s just such a
cute and little corgi. He should’ve been
president, he is the greatest of all time.”
Sola hopes Reggie continues to impact
the campus.
“Hopefully, this will become Corgi
Campus,” Sola said with a smile. “What
if there were just 10 corgis that were just
periodically going through the campus?”
Some may reason that petting a dog
for just a few minutes hardly qualifies
as therapy. Sola though, would disagree,
and he has the evidence to prove it.
“I’ve had mothers (of University stu-
dents), actually, a number of times,
message me to tell me how grateful and
how thankful they are that I bring Reg-
gie down here because their daughter or
their son is having a horrible semester,”
Sola said. “They’re stressed and every
time they see Reggie they have a good
day.”
In fact, Sola has been approached about
partnering with mental health organiza-
tions on campus. For Sola though, Reg-
gie’s role on campus is unique and best
independent from existing mental health
support organizations, where he believes
their resources exhaust what Reggie
could offer.
“I’m retired, so I have the time to
walk around here, walk around campus,
then go home and process the pictures,”
Sola said. “You see everybody walking
through the Diag and they’re all happy
and everything, but in their
mind they’re worrying about
their tests or their relation-
ships or their finances. I’ve
learned that. Reggie’s clientele
is the students on campus. And
I think I’d rather keep it that
way, too.”
Other students like Lingaya
believe Reggie truly has clout
on campus. Some people on
campus might not know Shea
Patterson plays quarterback
for the Michigan Wolverines,
but everyone seems to know
Reggie, whether you’ve just
begun at the University or are
in your final year.
“Reggie’s a member of the
community,” Lingaya said. “I’d
even go as far to say that he
is a celebrity. Most people on

campus know who Reggie is even if they
haven’t seen him. People who haven’t
seen him want to see him, people who
have seen him want to see him again.
It’s the smile that stays. It actually helps
their mental health and mental well-
being which I think is why people have
accepted Reggie.”
P

art of what makes Reggie such a
staple of campus is his accessi-
bility. Because Reggie is not on
a leash, he can roam freely around the
Diag and other parts of the U-M campus
essentially untamed.
The students have grown to enjoy this
aspect of their favorite campus corgi.
“I think it’s welcoming that he’s not on
a leash,” Kooistra said. “Because if a dog
is on a leash, it’s kinda intimidating to
go up and ask if you can pet the dog, but
since Reggie is so free roaming, it’s just
very inviting to go and pet.”
When scrolling on facebook, posts can
seem monotonous. There is the off-kilter
political post from your crazy uncle, an
infinite amount of pictures from last
week’s tailgate and random memes your

little brother tags you in. Yet through
it all, there is Reggie the Campus Corgi
pictured with smiling students, who for a
moment lack a care in the world.
“It’s such a charismatic figure to look
forward to on your timeline,” Kooistra
said. “It’s the reason why I think it was
shared so many times and seen by so
many people.”
As Welcome Week comes to an end and
Syllabus Week turns to midterm season,
Reggie Bee and Michael Sola will be there
waiting. Reggie will be on the Diag or
near the Union, roaming and stoking out
treats from friendly and upbeat students.
Sola will be there too, sitting on a bench
some feet away, just as eager to spark up
conversation with U-M students.
It may be worth speaking to him or
spending time with Reggie.
It may just make you want your own
dog, or — if you’re lucky — spend time
with him on your birthday.
Lingaya sums it up best: “I feel like
now Michigan isn’t Michigan without
mentioning Reggie.”

Amelia Cacchione/Daily
Reggie gets pets and attention from passing students on the Diag.

Amelia Cacchione/Daily
Reggie gets a treat from his owner, Michael Sola, on the Diag.

Amelia Cacchione/Daily
Reggie the Campus Corgi.