Canine enlivens Copley Plaza Hotel

BOSTON -- The 94-year-old Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel spent $38 million on a facelift, refurbishing its soaring lobby with 21-foot-high Italian marble columns, gilded ceilings and Waterford crystal chandeliers.

Yet the most popular upgrade didn't have anything to do with French antiques or the ornate arches in Peacock Alley, an entrance hall lined with eight-foot mirrors and Renaissance friezes.

No -- the most exciting thing to happen here lately was that the "Grande Dame of Boston" got a dog.

Catie Copley, a 68-pound black lab, now greets guests with a heartfelt wag and a curious nose. The hound came to the hotel as a gimmick in 2004 to showcase the renovation and has breathed life into the once stuffy 5,000-square-foot lobby.

"She's the world's most famous dog," said Sarah Trimmer, 11, on vacation from Bel Air, Md., who dragged her family to the Copley Plaza recently to give Catie a scratch.

Catie may be the most famous hotel pet since a family of ducks starting riding the elevator at The Peabody hotel in Memphis, Tenn., in the 1930s.

In Boston, some guests call three months in advance to book a walk with the pooch, dubbed a "canine ambassador" by the hotel. Tour guides on Boston's Duck Tours talk about Catie in the same breath as Trinity Church's architecture when describing Copley Square.

Catie has her own business cards, an e-mail address and sends care packages to other dogs staying at the hotel. She poses for photos, has been in Swedish dog magazines and is writing a book.

Catie trained to be a seeing-eye dog but needed a "career change" when she developed cataracts, said Jim Carey, the concierge director who takes her home most nights.

Catie and Carey take a 20-minute subway ride to work each morning, with Catie lying in the same spot in the first car next to the driver.

At work, she curls up on a powder-blue bed next to the concierges, who keep her walk schedule in a black leather appointment book. Most mornings Carey lets her run the hotel halls, her nails clicking across the marble floors. Guests and tourist huddle around her bed.