Bringing pooch to work

The dog days of dot-com glory when Web workers brought their faithful canine friends to work aren't entirely gone. Apparently, dog friendly jobs are still available, if you know where to look.

In honor of the Chinese New Year this weekend, the Year of the Dog, SimplyHired.com has created a new special section of its Web site that enables job seekers to search for companies that allow people to bring their dogs to work. Searching for "writer" in San Francisco on that page reveals six matches, five of them at Google and one at The Nature Conservancy. With its hiring frenzy going on Google likely represents a significant portion of the Bay Area dog-friendly results. A recent survey by Dogster and Simply Hired found that Google, Amazon and Autodesk topped the list of more than 400 companies deemed dog friendly but that the majority tend to be small companies with fewer than 50 employees, with most in California.

The study also found that 66 percent of dog owners said they would work longer hours if they were allowed to bring their dogs to work, and another 32 percent said they would take a pay cut to have that chance. In this dog-eat-dog world it's nice to have a little creature comfort.