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.

