What Honey The Money Dog Can Teach You About PR

Filling up your gas tank doesn’t get more fun than this.

When Don Rogers picked up a Cocker Spaniel named honey six years ago at the dog pound, he could never have guessed…

the fame she would bring to his gas station — Crazy D’s All American Fireworks at the El Cheapo Gas Station just off I-95 in South Carolina.

It’s a family business. So Honey comes to work each day with Don and his wife, Joyce, and their daughter or granddaughter.

One slow day, Don decided to teach the dog to take money (bills only) from customers and bring it to his wife at the cash register.

“Honey, go get the money!” he would command.

Soon everyone in town wanted to gas up at Don’s pumps so they could watch Honey grab their money between her teeth and run back to Joyce at the cash register. Honey can even tell real money from fake Monopoly money or even foreign currency. If it’s not real, she’ll just drop it on the floor.

She gets a treat each time she comes back to the cash register. And because she’s been so successful, she’s not on diet treats. The story is in the spiral-bound book Drive I-95, a collection of maps, history, trivia and fun facts about the heavily traveled interstate from Boston to the Florida border. Authors Stan Posner and Sandra Phillips-Posner, who are also Publicity Hounds, have had lots of media attention for the book. Now they’ve thought of yet another way to get reporters interested.

They piggyback onto the high gasoline prices. While everybody else is grumbling about the cost of fuel they’re telling the media about Honey and her antics and how much fun motorists are having filling up their tanks at El Cheapo Gas Station.

I met the Posners at the Book ExpoAmrica convention over the weekend in New York City. They walked the convention floor dressed in their giant I-95 signs that they wore like sandwich boards.

Other Publicity Hounds can learn a valuable lesson from the Posners.

If you can offer a humorous story or tidbit for an otherwise serious story, publicity is almost yours for the asking.