Meet Verb–Our Writer’s Camp Pooch

No one remembers exactly what day Verb arrived at Writer’s Camp. There was no application, no interview, and certainly no onboarding paperwork. He simply drove up in a red convertible.

A black-and-white Border Collie in a red bandanna, Verb pulled into camp, parked the car, and looked around as though he had found exactly the place he was looking for.

The license plate on the convertible read: RUMBLEWRITE.

It didn’t take him long to make himself at home. In fact, if you’ve been paying attention, you may have already spotted him. Verb has been turning up around camp for a while now, particularly in our Editorial Leadership Intensive materials. He seems quite comfortable with editorial education. Give him a notebook, a laptop, and something complicated to think about, and he settles right in.

That makes sense. Verb is, after all, a dog of action.

At Writer’s Camp, we spend a lot of time helping people get words moving—writing them, revising them, reviewing them, editing them, publishing them. A place devoted to action needed a Verb.

But there is another part of this story. After Verb had already begun making himself at home at Writer’s Camp, we discovered that there was a real Verb: a remarkable Border Collie named Verb, owned and handled by Perry DeWitt.

And not just any Border Collie. Verb was an agility champion, becoming the first dog to win the Westminster Masters Agility Championship twice, in 2019 and 2021.

So we wrote to Perry. We told her about Writer’s Camp and our own Verb, and asked whether she would mind sharing her famous dog’s name with the Border Collie who had driven his red convertible into our little corner of the scholarly world. She didn’t mind at all. Better yet, Perry sent us a picture of Verb with his family.

And suddenly our Verb had a family tree: Verb; his son, Wit; his granddaughter, Genuine; and little Spike, his great-grandson, a Border Collie–Papillon mix.

We thought we were inventing a mascot. Instead, somewhere along the way, a fictional Border Collie who drove into Writer’s Camp in a red convertible became connected to a real dog, a real person, and a real family.

So it seems Verb is staying.

You’ll see him around camp—learning, writing, editing, and occasionally reminding us that staring at a blank page accomplishes very little. Sometimes you just have to get the words moving.

And when things really get going?

Verb is ready to Rumblewrite.