How My Grumpy Traveling Dog Went Viral Online

To my surprise, my sleepy little chihuahua has gone viral online. He's still sleeping off his recent fame—give the boy some time! I recently started posting about my dog's travels on Instagram as a complement to this blog, in hopes of building a reader audience. Honestly, I was kind of dreading making short-form content because who really needs to spend more time on their phone these days?

I felt old and had no idea what I was doing—don't get me started on TikTok. While looking through my camera roll of our travels, I giggled at how many of the pictures he's sleeping in. We could be standing in front of literally the most interesting places in the world—Notre Dame, Ipanema Beach, Mt. Fuji—and Tishka is usually passed out. What can I say, he's hard to please! In all seriousness, though, he does enjoy exploring new places—he just needs a lot of rest afterward.

So rather than pretend like he was enthusiastic 24/7, I made a video focusing on what makes me laugh about my dog: his chronic sleepiness and general blasé attitude. I made a reel about "places that didn't impress my dog," set it to Shania Twain's "That Don't Impress Me Much," chose a few clips of him looking like he couldn't care less in different countries. I uploaded it without thinking much; the video cracked me up, and that was good enough for me.

To my surprise, it quickly outperformed my handful of previous videos, racking up 70,000 views in a few days. The comments poured in with exclamations of adoration for my cute, exhausted pup. Seeing as that style of video triggered the algorithm, I kept making grumpy travel pup videos, and each one seemed to do better than the last.

Then I got specific and made a video about what didn't impress my dog in Brazil, and boom—300,000 views and 1,000 followers in 2 days. Now my dog is famous in Brazil and has loads of fans wanting to know when he's coming back so they can try to impress him. I read so many hilarious comments saying things like, "I don't care what gringos think about Brazil, but I do care what this little dog thinks!" One girl even photoshopped Tishka's face onto a Brazilian pet ID card, officially making him Brazilian.

So what does this newfound fame mean for my dog? I, for one, am hoping it doesn't all go to his head. While this has been a fun couple of days, I feel like his social media is taking too much of the spotlight, and my eyes feel a little strained from staring at my phone. My whole intention was to spend time writing about our trips and inspire others to do the same, not to become just another dog influencer.

While I've seen a tiny portion of clicks coming over from his Instagram, I want to focus on the original goal of making a quality dog travel blog that can help people plan trips with their dogs. Let's hope I can figure out how to balance both! Until then, thanks for following along with our adventures.