Have you ever wondered what your pet would say if it could talk? Millions of pet owners have fake conversations with their beloved animals, but Chris Equale, the creator behind the popular social account @hammyandolivia and new resident of Great Falls, happens to share his conversations with his corgis, Hamilton and Olivia, with the world.
It all started during the 2020 lockdown. “I’m sitting [at] home with cabin fever, pacing around, and I took an opportunity to snap a video of my dog Olivia barking at a vacuum cleaner,” says Equale. That video has 2.6 million views to date and kick-started the rise of Hammy and Olivia. (Olivia died last November.)
“That was our aha moment where we just decided that if we could take a little time out of our day just to make people smile, we’d sort of be doing our part to add a little joy to really tumultuous times,” says Equale.
Since then, the corgi duo has made over 900 videos and accumulated over 14 million followers across their platforms, including 6.7 million followers on TikTok. That seemingly instantaneous success allowed Equale and his fiancée, Sarah Rasmussen, to make content creation their full-time jobs.
A native of Potomac, Maryland, Equale had been living in Las Vegas for nearly 10 years before moving to NoVA. The reason for the move? Hammy and Olivia, of course. “We went through about six summers with the pets and it’s terrible,” says Equale. “They can’t go outside. It’s 120 degrees six months out of the year, and it’s not a great environment to have them [in].” They packed up and moved to NoVA last summer, where there are variable seasons and space for the pets to roam.
When it’s time to film, a lot more goes into each of the 15- to 30-second clips than you may expect. Equale explains that after he comes up with an idea for the day, it can take up to two hours to film and another two to three hours to edit. Plus, he needs to come up with the dialogue, a comedic aspect, and costumes. (The third bedroom in Equale’s home serves as the pets’ closet, storing over 300 outfits for Hammy and the pair’s cats, Theodore and Eleanor.)
During the last four years in the limelight, there have been some crazy moments, including the dogs’ collaboration with Chippendales in Las Vegas. (Yes, you read that right.) “Having my dog, Olivia, wheeled out with eight shirtless men, [being] a total diva, and Hammy then gets to wear like the Chippendales’ bow tie and have his own Magic Mike moment,” says Equale. “It was a really, really hilarious full-circle moment.”
And making families and friends laugh is always what drives the content creators.
“We’ve always seen this as being our online photo album that we can always look back on, and enjoy them and laugh, just because it is so relatable to how they are in everyday life.”
Feature image courtesy Chris Equale
This story originally ran in our April issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
