Leo

His full name is Leopold. Leopold Kohli, to be precise, which is a name I fought for and mostly lost, and which is now used exclusively by the vet and no one else. Everyone calls him Leo.

The previous dog was Pepsi. Pepsi Kohli. If you understand why that worked, you understand the naming standards I was trying to maintain.

Leopold was the right choice - historically grounded, quietly dignified, faintly ironic on a dog built three inches off the ground. I considered others. I am not going to pretend the deliberations were brief. Helmut Kohli was briefly in the running, which tells you something about my sense of humor; the room did not agree. Eventually, Leopold emerged as the consensus: serious enough to feel intentional, absurd enough to feel honest.

He is, as advertised, a ridiculous animal. He is longer than he should be and lower to the ground than seems structurally advisable, and he approaches every situation with the certainty that his opinion is both necessary and welcome. He is usually wrong about this. He does not care.

What he is, underneath all of that, is company. Uncomplicated, unconditional, present-in-the-room company of a kind that turns out to be harder to find than you'd think. He sits next to me when I work. He registers strong objections when I leave and stronger ones when I return. He has never once made me feel like the effort wasn't worth it, which is more than I can say for some professional relationships.

In a chapter that has been, by almost any measure, the best of my life - a business I'm proud of, a marriage I'm proud of, a sense of forward motion I haven't felt in a long time - Leopold is not an insignificant part of why that feels true at home.

It turns out I did need another dog. It turns out his name is Leopold.

Nishan Kohli is Co-Founder and CEO of BIMstream.