The Chef’s Dog

If you meet chef and food writer Molly Baz now, it might be hard to imagine a time when she wasn’t attached at the hip to her 8-year-old dachshund, Tuna. But a decade ago, she didn’t even consider herself a dog person.

Baz had grown up with family dogs, but spent her twenties focused on other things. “I went to college,” she said, “then I moved to New York. I was just living my young girl single life.” As a result, she said, she “forgot about dogs for, like, 10 years.”

Dogs were “not really on the radar.”

This doggy dry spell ended thanks to her best friend and boyfriend, who shared an intense affinity for dachshunds. If you’ve met a dachshund fanatic, it may not surprise you that their enthusiasm was contagious. “They put me onto weenie dogs,” she said, and she soon came to adore the breed’s distinctive quirks. “I got fixated on the idea of having a cartoon character as a dog.”

Baz married her dachshund-loving boyfriend in 2017, and during their honeymoon in Portugal they made a big decision: “We are ready. Let’s get a weenie dog.”

“We’ll call her Tuna.”

When they returned home, they welcomed that weenie dog: a tiny, sweet, 12-week-old puppy.

They’d chosen her name during their honeymoon, eschewing hot dog and sausage terminology for a food with more personal resonance. “Portugal is famous for their tinned fish,” Baz said. “We ate so much tinned fish because we went to Lisbon, and it was everywhere. We were like, ‘We’ll just call her Tuna.’”

Over the past eight years, Baz and Tuna have changed and grown together. 

Once a ball of chaotic energy, Tuna now emanates a “coolness and calmness that she didn’t used to have,” Baz said. Intensely loyal, Tuna only has eyes for her inner circle. “As her mother, I get a lot of gratification out of that,” Baz said. Winning Tuna over usually takes patience and multiple visits, though she can still surprise Baz by offering a kiss to the occasional stranger, as she did to a lucky member of the film crew on our recent shoot.

Fittingly considering her piscine name, Tuna loves the water. When Tuna finds any body of water, her ears perk up in excitement before she charges into it. “She shines most when she’s by a body of water,” Baz said.

As Tuna grew into herself, Baz realized what it meant to raise a dog. The change was so profound for Baz that she came to identify with dogs—and as a dog person—in a way that she never did growing up with her family’s spaniels. “Until Tuna came into my life,” she said, “I didn’t have eyes for dogs. I would walk just straight by other dogs.”

Now, she said, “[dogs] stop you in your tracks and you see the world through their eyes.” Whenever she sees a dog on the street, she stops to admire, pet, and chat with them. “I never had that instinct before Tuna.”

Baz also credits Tuna with helping her see herself as a parent. “Some light turned on in me when we got her,” Baz said. “She paved the way for the decision to have a human child.” And in 2024, Baz welcomed her son, Gio.

A Farmer’s Dog girlie

Though Tuna has changed over the years, her diet has remained consistent since puppyhood, when she began eating real, human-grade food from The Farmer’s Dog.

Baz hit on this diet after trial and error. “We tried so many different things,” she recalled, “and she just wasn’t into kibble.” As for Tuna’s attitude toward canned wet food, “she’d rather go on a hunger strike.” Eventually Tuna tried The Farmer’s Dog, and it stuck. Said Baz of her dog, “She’s a Farmer’s Dog girlie.”

Every morning, after they wake up between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m., Tuna and Baz head to the kitchen where Baz prepares coffee as Tuna sits next to her, staring at the fridge. Once coffee starts brewing, Tuna gets her food. Then, at 5 p.m. sharp, she’s right back by the fridge; at 5:02 p.m., she starts whining. Even after eight years, she still “goes buck wild” for the food, Baz said.

“Tuna’s like my child, so I feed her only the best,” she said. If Baz cooked for Tuna herself, The Farmer’s Dog is “the closest thing to what it would look like,” she said, noting that it’s full of the very same veggies in her crisper. (A note that if you are going to home-cook for your dog, you need to make sure their food is complete and balanced. The Farmer’s Dog offers a DIY mix to make that easy).

“Something shifts in your brain.”

These days, Baz’s dog is on her mind every day from the moment she wakes up—she just needed to find the right one. “When you’re an adult and you decide to have a dog of your own, something shifts in your brain,” she said. “Motherhood kicks in. Tuna started the journey of me transforming into being like a responsible, caring, mother-like figure.”

It’s a big change from Baz’s life just a few years ago, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Tuna is so all about her people,” she said, “and she makes you feel really loved when you’re on the inside. And nothing feels better than that.”

Disclosure: Molly Baz is a paid partner of The Farmer’s Dog

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