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GREENSBORO — He works in customer service, and chances are, his is the first face you’ll see when you roll through the gates at Batts Body Shop on Guilford College Road.

He’s easy to recognize: Enthusiastic and friendly to a fault. Close-cropped gray hair. Big brown eyes.

Cold, wet, black nose.

Caden, a 5-year-old Old English sheepdog, serves as the mascot and greeter at the body shop. He’s also a cancer survivor, still undergoing the chemotherapy treatments that keep him alive.

Caden has no health insurance and the treatments aren’t cheap. But customers at the shop have rallied around Batts’ unofficial 13th — and perhaps most popular — employee.

“Everyone who goes there knows him, and he acts almost like a person,” says Bill Fearington, a parts delivery man for Crown Automotive. “He’s always happy to see you, and I think it’s nice (customers) are taking up money to help him.”

A lockbox labeled “Caden’s Cancer Fund” collects customers’ spare change. All the money goes toward the dog’s veterinary bills.

“A lot of people know him and ask about him,” says John Batts, who started bringing Caden to work with him at his parents’ business when the dog was 10 weeks old. “Some people who are regular customers will come by even when they don’t need any work done, just to check on him.”

It’s easy to see why.

Take a seat in the lobby, and Caden will lie at your feet with his front leg draped over your shoe. When a familiar car drives through the parking lot gate, Caden will jump up and use his front paws to push open the glass door so he can greet the new
arrival.

“He comes to work in the morning and goes home at quitting time with me,” says Janet Batts, who works at the business her husband, Ken, started in 1980.

“When no one else is happy about coming to work, Caden is always happy to go to work.”

Caden’s daily routine at the shop was interrupted in the second week of October when somebody petting the dog felt lumps bigger than golf balls beneath the thick, long fur on both sides of his neck.

“My daughter, Marie, works as a veterinary technician,” Janet Batts says. “She knew where to look, and she said, 'Mom, it isn’t good.’”

It was cancer: lymphosarcoma. Caden needed 25 weeks of chemotherapy or he would die.

So, he spent every Tuesday away from the body shop, getting treatments across the street at Guilford-Jamestown Veterinary Hospital.

It took its toll. Caden was listless and couldn’t keep food down. He lost weight and fur.

“We just got him a haircut because he was looking rough,” John Batts says. “This breed is long-haired but doesn’t shed. Because of the chemo, his hair was coming out in clumps. He was a mess.”

Although Caden no longer looks like the typical hair-over-the-eyes sheepdog, he is more like his old self, John Batts says. He still goes for treatments, but now it’s every two weeks instead of weekly.

“It’s not curable, but they told us if it did go into remission he could live several more years,” Janet Batts says.

“Right now, it’s in remission.”

She pauses to pat Caden on the head.

“People think you’re crazy for spending money to treat a dog,” she says. “But we love him like he’s part of the family.”

Contact Jeff Mills at 373-7024 or jeff.mills@news-record.com