By Emily Hutto

Meet Joplin. She’s a bright orange, raging cattle dog-greyhound mutt who likes the sound of her own bark. I say often that she’s been to more breweries than most people have. You don’t exactly have a choice when your mom is a beer writer and adopts you while she’s writing a book about Colorado’s beer scene.

Joplin’s first brewery visit was to Boulder’s Avery Brewing Co. the day she was adopted five years ago. I blame the fine folks at Avery, who fed me Hog Heaven (back when it used to be called Barleywine) for breakfast before I ended up at the pound ... don’t ask how. It’s not every day you go brewery touring and come home with a three-month-old puppy.

Joplin spent much of her adolescence on the patio at Funkwerks in Fort Collins. If anyone from the brewery is reading this, I’m sorry again about that A-frame chalkboard that she broke running full speed through the parking lot. She was just so excited about the saison. So was I.

Fort Collins is home to one of the largest dog populations in the country, with about one dog per every six people. Needless to say, the local breweries were glad to put up with Joplin’s antics.

Joplin is also a regular at Denver’s Platt Park Brewing, where the brewery welcomes four-legged guests with a vat of milkbones at the door, and Golden’s Cannonball Creek, her favorite aprés-hiking destination. If our outdoor adventures take us further west, she insists on a stop at Bonfire Brewing in Eagle to visit Sugar the brewdog.

Sugar is a mutt who was adopted from the Eagle County Animal Shelter in 2008. Her humans are Bonfire owners Amanda and Andy Jessen, and she gets to go to work with them every day. “There are definitely other resident brewdogs here too,” says Andy. “Maxwell the Golden Doodle, Digby the Black Lab, Jake the Cattle Dog who is always on a barstool.”

At Bonfire, there’s even a dog-themed chalkboard depicting the brewery’s regular pups, plus some deceased dogs and some that have moved away.

“They’re sitting on the stools at the bar. And then Sugar tending bar,” Andy says. “It’s wildly popular, the longest standing artwork we’ve had up there.”

Photo of Gomez provided by Telluride Brewing Co.

It’s not uncommon for a dog owner to come looking for his or her “missing” dog at Bonfire. “The dogs usually turn out to be at the pub,” Andy says. “It seems many dogs know where mom and dad are ultimately heading!”

At Telluride Brewing, the resident brewdog Gomez the Basset Hound is regularly missing. “He’s untrainable — the best and worst dog that ever lived,” jokes his owner and brewery president Tommy Thacher. “Everyone knows Gomez. He escapes constantly. He used to jump out of my apartment window and cruise town.”

Gomez always finds his way home to the brewery though. His friends Barley the St. Bernard-Bernese mix, made famous by the Instagram account @telluridebrewing, and Louis the Jack Russell are waiting for him. All three hit it off on our last roadtrip.

“I always enjoy going to other people’s tasting rooms and petting their dogs,” Thacher says. “Our dogs were integral in our founding. They used to come to work with us every day.”

Telluride Brewing Co. owner Chris Fish provided this photo of Barley chilling in a river near Telluride.

Thacher is like a lot of other brewers in Colorado who love their dogs as much as they love craft beer, if not just a little bit more. There’s something about beer culture that dog moms and dads connect with, he says. And to hang out with your dog while you drink a beer is priceless, he adds. Joplin couldn’t agree more.

DISCLAIMER: Dogs are deathly allergic to hops. Yes, deathly. Ingesting hops can be highly toxic for dogs, with symptoms including restlessness, panting, vomiting, abdominal pain, seizures, rapid heart rate, and high temperature. Don’t share beer with your pup, and keep him or her away from hop plants.

Emily Hutto is a Colorado-based journalist and marketing professional who has spent many of her days picking the brains of the country’s best brewers. She founded RadCraft in 2012 to support the communications needs of craft breweries.