TikTok’s Nala is more than just her stomps
The golden retriever is helping owner Chris Lindamood live his best life.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, from Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci.
Yes, I got to see Nala over Zoom. —Kate
The TikTok song that most often gets stuck in my head isn’t available on Spotify. In fact, you can only hear it under special circumstances. When, that is, creator Chris Lindamood scratches his dog Nala Lindamood’s butt.
“She stomp, she stomp, she do the Nala stomps.”
The Utah-based creator and his golden retriever have earned over three million followers on TikTok thanks, in part, to the signature stomps Nala’s back legs can’t help but perform whenever she’s scratched just so.
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The stomps—and subsequent zoomies—almost always take place in front of a backdrop of majestic mountains, or a snowy trail, or any number of other wonders of nature that Chris and Nala like to hike a few times a week. Camping content is its own genre on TikTok and YouTube (extremely gentle guy internet), and requires lots of work just to keep setting up the camera while climbing, trekking, and otherwise adventuring. Add a golden retriever into the mix, and you’ve really got your hands full.
Chris‚ who by day works as a pharmacist, moved to Utah six years ago with one goal in mind.
“I knew that with all the hiking and dog-friendly trails around here that I had to get a dog,” he tells me in a recent Zoom call. “I started researching breeds and at first I was actually gonna get a corgi … But golden retrievers are just great dogs. So I think it was two years after I moved here, I got Nala.”
Nala can be found on several platforms, including Instagram and YouTube, but it’s really TikTok where she and Chris found their audience. Nala, and her stomps, have become so popular that even humans have started to give it a try. (No offense, but I have to say: it’s cuter when Nala does it.)
The real joy of the account, however, is the friendship between the two, and feeling like you’re part of the special memories they’re making.
“I’m convinced this is the happiest dog in the universe,” commenters write.
“Honestly wish I was Nala she lives such a good life,” another wrote on Chris’s most recent post.
In this interview for paid subscribers, Chris and I talk about how he stumbled upon Nala’s stomps, the work that goes into combining hiking with content creation, and how Nala has made him a local celebrity.
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