Bailey is underneath a barbecue looking for a lizard when the video starts.
At first, there is not much to see beyond the back half of a very determined dog. Then Bailey begins to reverse. Out comes the body, followed by the wrinkles, the floppy ears and finally the wonderfully oversized little face that has become unmistakably hers.
For anyone discovering Bailey for the first time, the reaction tends to follow a familiar sequence: laugh, look again, then immediately try to figure out what kind of dog they just saw.
@beeing.bailey I am guessing a curly tail lizard 🦎 was under the bbq. But she didn’t tell me 🤣.
On Instagram, the reel quickly took off, introducing a much bigger audience to Bailey THE Mini Hippo. But the question filling the comments was hardly new to her. Bailey has been inspiring variations of What kind of dog is that? for most of her life.
Nicole, it turns out, knows exactly what that feels like.
It started with a dog at Coco Market
About nine months after losing her English Mastiff, Buddha, Nicole was at Coco Market in Delray Beach when a brown dog stopped her in her tracks.
“I went right over (like everyone does to me) and asked what kind of dog it was and if I could touch it,” she remembers.
“When I touched that dog’s face, it was like I imagine a cloud would feel like. I had never felt anything so soft. I knew this was my next dog.”
— Nicole Lucas
Nicole contacted the breeder that night, did a FaceTime interview and put a deposit on Bailey the following day. One chance encounter had turned into a very specific plan: Nicole wanted a Mini Hippo of her own.
Nicole and Bailey today.
Five pounds of spicy pepper
Bailey came home two days before Thanksgiving in 2024 weighing just five pounds, all puppy fluff and apparently very little hesitation.
As her puppy coat changed, one particularly useful piece of Bailey mythology remained: the little tuft on top of her head that Nicole calls her unicorn horn. For a dog who has already been compared to several creatures that do not technically exist, it feels appropriate.
Bailey arrived home at five pounds, before the puppy coat gave way to the face people recognize today.
The theories
The guesses get creative
Bailey has been called a bunny, a manatee, a Pound Puppy and one of those round-faced fancy goldfish. She has been compared to a Jim Henson creation and someone who wandered out of Whoville. Falcor from The NeverEnding Story comes up regularly. So does ALF.
The Bailey Lookalike Hall of Fame
ALF · Falcor · Manatee · Bunny
Pound Puppy · Whoville resident
Jim Henson creation · Fat-face goldfish
Chow Chow
One face. An impressive number of theories.
“I think ALF is the funniest because of the size of his nose,” Nicole says. “I find Falcor from The NeverEnding Story the most heartwarming.”
A lot of people also guess Chow Chow and ask whether Bailey has a purple tongue. She does not. It is pink.
The guessing does not stop at Instagram. Nicole says she now plans extra time into outings because people stop them so often, and she happily lets strangers come over to meet Bailey. She even carries snacks so people can feed her.
“Touching her face and watching her jowls when she chews is a true experience,” Nicole says. At Hobby Lobby, one person spotted Bailey, screamed, ran over and dropped to the floor to meet her.
Even when people do not stop, Nicole often hears some version of What kind of dog was that? after they have already passed. Bailey has inspired a remarkably wide range of theories.
The actual answer
51.4% Chinese Shar-Pei
48.6% Cocker Spaniel
Bailey’s Embark results are remarkably straightforward. The theories inspired by her face have been considerably more creative.
Beyond the face
Then there are the pacifiers
Bailey’s face may be what first gets people’s attention, but her current great passion has nothing to do with genetics: pacifiers.
She has about a dozen of them and has developed her own technique for making them squeak with her snoot, not her teeth.
Nicole says one of the most unmistakably Bailey moments happened when she climbed onto the TV stand with a pacifier in her mouth, wagging her tail as though she had just accomplished something extraordinary.
Between the pacifier collection, the baby-dinosaur noises and her long-running habit of giving Ocean the Frenchie “the business,” Bailey has built a personality every bit as distinctive as her face.
One last thing people get wrong about Bailey
Social media creates one particularly persistent Bailey illusion: people tend to assume she is a much bigger dog. Maybe it is the broad muzzle, the jowls or simply the amount of personality she manages to fit into a frame.
In reality, Bailey weighs just 24 pounds.
Not exactly the size you might expect from a dog regularly compared to a manatee, Falcor and various creatures from another universe.
Bailey, all 24 pounds of her.
Maybe that is part of Bailey’s charm: almost everyone arrives with a theory about what she is. Then they meet Bailey, and the answer starts to matter a little less.
Photos & special thanks
Photos courtesy of Nicole Lucas, who shared Bailey’s story with The Fetch.
Follow Bailey’s adventures at
@Beeing.Bailey
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