What my dog taught me about leading a lab

From ScienceMag:

As I sat at my desk wrestling with the grant proposal I was coordinating, I could feel my eyes glaze over. I’d spent all afternoon figuring out how to keep dozens of consortium partners happy, and I was now deep in the thankless task of cutting budgets and moving numbers from one column to another. But just then an unlikely lab member offered a reprieve: my dog, Zazil. She had been snoozing under my desk, but now she put her head on my thigh. This was the signal: Enough, let’s go for a walk. For 2 years Zazil had been giving me this kind of wise counsel on a daily basis.

When I received an offer to establish my lab in 2022, I was delighted at the prospect of some stability after years of being a postdoc. But I had seen too many colleagues burn out from the pressure of running a lab, or push their trainees so hard that everyone in the group felt miserable. How could I create an environment where we did good, robust, cutting-edge science while also looking out for each other?

As I pondered these questions, I learned that the institute I was joining allowed employees to bring dogs to work. I was thrilled. Zazil was my wife’s dog, and had been part of my life since we’d met 4 years previously. It had taken a while for Zazil to trust me, but we’d grown very close during the COVID-19 pandemic, when our daily walks brought some much-needed routine. When I moved into my new office, I brought a pillow in for her, and soon she began to accompany me to the lab nearly every day.

It was nice to have a companion in those early days, when I was the only member of my fledgling group. But as the pressure ramped up, I found that Zazil wasn’t just a personal comfort—she also helped keep me grounded. When I got hung up on paper rejections, failed grant applications, or administrative busywork, she kept things in perspective—after all, these things didn’t matter to her. Zazil was a rescue dog from the Caribbean, and she had lost a leg in an accident at a very young age. She didn’t let her injury limit her, and she showed remarkable resilience and persistence.

As the lab grew and I began to hire my trainees, having Zazil constantly by my side helped me think beyond myself. The daily responsibility of caring for her and interpreting her needs was a reminder that my primary responsibility was to those around me, no matter how much outside pressure I felt. Although I was initially focused on maximizing productivity, my approach shifted with time. I made a conscious decision to ask my trainees about work-life balance at the beginning of our one-on-one meetings, and I became more attentive to how their workload affected them.

Zazil improved my own well-being, too. Her mandated pauses for walks didn’t always come at a convenient time. But they ensured I got fresh air and exercise, and gave me downtime to reflect on my work, often helping me get unstuck when a problem had been plaguing me—such as how to balance the books when overseeing a large consortium (the answer: to cut everyone’s budget by the same fraction).

I didn’t expect everyone to accept Zazil’s presence in the lab. But over time, even the cat lovers warmed up to her. She became an integral part of the group, who dubbed her Floor Manager and Sleep Practitioner. I would joke that she held a “dogtorate” in Advanced Morale Management. In weekly lab meetings her snoring provided comic relief—fitting for a lab concerned with circadian rhythms and sleep. One postdoc would entice her with cheese and other delicious snacks. Another lab member based overseas would ask us to pan the camera to Zazil at the end of the calls.

Academia often rewards speed, intensity, and constant forward motion, but Zazil reminded us of the importance of looking out for each other, and of how much of scientific life happens between experiments and deadlines. Not every lab can or should have a dog, but there are many other steps group leaders can take to cultivate care and patience alongside productivity.

Zazil passed away in December 2025. But although she no longer pads through the hallway, her legacy remains. She kept my lab human.

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