How Tiki took over TikTok
An interview with dog foster extraordinaire Isabel Klee.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
It’s day 26 with Tiki! —Kate
For the first time, the new Pope has a digital footprint—and people are using it to stan him like an influencer.
Tiki is the biggest celebrity in my group chat. He’s also a small, extremely terrified rescue dog. So terrified, in fact, that the ASPCA warned his foster,
, that he might be beyond saving. “I took in this dog knowing that that might be a story that I would have to tell,” she tells me over the phone. “It was the biggest risk I've taken when fostering.”
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Three weeks later, and Tiki gets the zoomies every time Isabel and her fiancé get home. He rolls over to ask for belly rubs. He even has started playing with toys. For those who have been following Tiki’s journey on TikTok from the beginning, these are huge, sometimes unbelievable, milestones. His first on-camera tail wag got 2.9 million views. The first time he accepted pets? 9.2 million, almost neck and neck with his latest milestone: the first time he sat on Isabel’s lap.
Tiki is the most viral of Isabel’s fosters, but is just one part of her larger work saving dogs and encouraging others to do the same. In this interview, we chat about her history with fostering, Tiki’s progress, and the last-minute rush to make sure the canine star was included in her upcoming book.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
I know you've been in this space with fostering and making content about it for a while, so first just give me a little bit of the background into who you are before we talk about Tiki.
I have been working in the internet dog space for nine years now. Right out of college I started working for a very well-known dog photographer, and I worked there for seven years, and I had my dog Simon’s account — also sorry if there's so much crinkling. Tiki just discovered toys.
Oh my God, is that gonna be the next day’s video?
Yeah, tomorrow is with a toy. It's the cutest thing ever, but he also chooses the loudest toys for whatever reason.
No, I'm happy that he's making his voice known in this interview.
He has a lot to say. So when I first adopted my dog about 6 years ago, I made an account for him and for a long time, Simon Sits was just Simon and I didn't really share anything else because I had taken a long break from fostering after I adopted Simon. And then about two years ago, my fiancé and I moved into our current apartment, which has a big backyard, which as we know in Brooklyn is unheard of. And we just looked at each other and were like, should we try fostering? And I documented the process of that first foster dog, getting back into the swing of things. His name was Ken, and that video jumpstarted my TikTok career. So we just kept going and last year I think we fostered 13 dogs in 12 months. At this point we always have a foster dog. We probably take like a week off before getting one again. But it's just been really amazing and with each foster our audience grows more and more. And of course there are ones that are more viral than others, and I would say Tiki is probably the most well-known at this point because the world has just fallen in love with him.
And what’s Tiki’s story?
Tiki is a foster of mine. My previous foster dogs had just gotten adopted, and my friend Hillary, she kind of spearheaded the foster department at Muddy Paws. And she just texted and she was like, “Oh man, the ASPCA just got a bunch of these dogs in” and she sent me photos I was like, “Oh my God they're so cute.” She sent me a little description of each dog. It was like, you know, “This dog just got his eye removed. This dog just got all his teeth removed” and then the last one was Tiki and it said, like, “By far the most shut down of the group.” And just behaviorally so disconnected from everything. And I was like, all right well that's the one I want.
When I picked Tiki up, actually I was a little bit nervous to share his story because the team at the ASPCA didn't know if he was going to be able to be rehabilitated. This is a part of fostering that people don't talk about a lot, is sometimes dogs are just too broken to be good pets, and it's really heartbreaking but if a dog won't sleep or eat or use the bathroom or bites everybody that touches them or is just so scared they’re wetting themselves 24/7, the more humane thing is probably euthanasia, which is really hard and people don't want to hear that. So I took in this dog knowing that that might be a story that I would have to tell and knowing that a lot of people would probably be upset with me because they wouldn't really get it so it was kind of the biggest risk I've taken when fostering and obviously it didn't go that way and thank God. Tiki’s just blown everybody away and he is a completely different dog and even everyone at the ASPCA, they're like, “We are shocked by how much he has grown and changed and healed.” I expected his story to pull at the heartstrings, but I could not have predicted the way that he's just stolen everybody's hearts.
A recent video of yours addressed people’s comments saying you should adopt him. What is it like to manage that parasocial Tiki relationship?
It honestly happens with every single foster dog I've ever had. Tiki, obviously, is much more viral so there's many more of those comments, but I get those comments with every single foster dog. I kind of roll my eyes out a little bit, but I also get it. I'm sharing this heartwarming story and the best possible ending for people watching it is for me to keep the dog. It’s a fairytale ending and I understand, and also I think there's an element of it that people love him so much and they want to see him every day for the rest of their lives. And who knows if he gets adopted if his new family will make an Instagram or TikTok for him, so I get that element of it too. And I just try to take that as like a learning lesson of being like, “Hey, I know you think that this is the best scenario but actually the best case scenario is that I keep helping dogs like this and I inspire other people to help dogs like this and the message just keeps compounding and the love just keeps growing.”
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Now that Tiki is showing his personality a bit more, what is his personality? What are his little quirks?
It's changing every single day, but let me think of his cute little quirks. Every time we come home he gets the zoomies and sprints around our kitchen island and is so excited and so happy. Like I said, he just played with a toy for the first time yesterday and despite being extremely scared of everything, he's obsessed with the loudest toy that we have and it's super crinkly and has the loudest squeaker. He just defies everything that I assumed about him. He loves cheese as you can see from all the videos. He loves belly rubs, that's a new thing this morning. I was sleeping and I opened my eyes and he walked up the little pet steps that I taught him to use like two days ago and just laid on his back for belly rubs and I'm like, “What? Who is this?” He loves our bathmat. He loves blankets. He loves rubbing on any soft fabrics. He's just really curious, like anytime you open a drawer or the dishwasher or the refrigerator, his face is stuck in there and he's like, “What are you doing in here? What's going on?” He loves our dog.
I love Simon.
He's so silly and he keeps making us laugh and keeps having these amazing breakthroughs. He'll be so scared of something for like three days straight and then the next day he's like—like with the stairs. It's like I tried to get him up the stairs for three days straight, and now he's just going up and down them like it's no big deal.
I know outside of the actual fostering you write, and you're working on a book, correct?
Yes, I am.
Tell me a bit about that. Is Tiki gonna appear in it?
It's so funny you say that. Okay, so my book is called Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried About and it's about my 20s in New York City dating men, my friendships, but all told through the lens of dogs. So comparing all of my life experiences to my experiences with dogs. And I finished my first draft mid April and I just had my first editor meeting last Monday and both my editor and my literary agent texted me and they're like, “You have to add a Tiki chapter.”
Of course.
I'm not religious, but I am thanking God that I did not turn in my final manuscript. So yes, Tiki will be in the book, thank God. He got in there right on time.
Welcome to the weekly scroll, a roundup of articles, links, and other thoughts from being on the internet this week! Ahead: A cult movie subscription, some long-overdue guidelines, and…white genocide?
What I’m consuming…
They couldn’t have had her climb just a little higher in this top picture?
The album better be good to make up for the weird vibes in this.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Embedded to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.