A dog may be (wo)man’s best friend, but coffee and stressed college students are inseparable. Luckily, students who love both dogs and coffee can find a place in New York City’s paw-fect dog cafe, Boris and Horton, which opened earlier this year.

Located at 195 Avenue A, Boris and Horton is close enough to campus for convenience, but far enough away to put some distance between students and school.

Logan Mikhly, Boris and Horton’s co-owner, explained how the cafe is unique within the city.

“We are New York’s first Department of Health approved dog-friendly coffee shop, so we’re the first place in the city that is sort of going by the rules to allow people to eat and drink alongside their dogs,” Mikhly said.

The idea for this innovative cafe came from a simple source: inconvenience. Before opening Boris and Horton, Mikhly expressed the frustration she and her father experienced whenever they walked their dogs and wouldn’t be able to take them into cafes to grab coffee. One of them would always need to hold the dogs while the other went inside to get coffee. Boris and Horton was the solution they came up with.

Mikhly explained that the Department of Health was reasonable to work with but had a few strict rules that the cafe needed to follow. One mandated that the cafe have two seperate sides: one for people who have dogs with them and one for the counter and other patrons.

“There’s the actual coffee bar, and then there’s the dog side,” Mikhly said. “So if you came by yourself with your dog, you get all of your food and drink from our walk-up window on 12th Street and then carry it into the dog side.”

The cafe has a very comfortable feel to it, and the seperate sides do not make it feel disjointed. The menu for humans is entirely vegetarian because, as Mikhly described, since selling animal products at a cafe that is devoted to dogs did not feel morally right. Boris and Horton also offers a menu for the doggie diners, but it is not vegetarian.

Aside from providing a place for humans to bring their canine companions, the cafe has other potential benefits for NYU students. Steinhardt junior Susan Oh sees the cafe as a nice place for stress relief.

“I think it’s pretty cool,” Oh said. “If you need like a stress relieving session, you can just visit that cafe for some coffee and interaction.”

The cafe also provides an alternative for those who prefer not to visit cat cafes, recent trend. CAS first-year Adler Guerrero agreed that the cafe could provide stress relief, especially around midterms, and explained that he prefers it to other options.

“I’m not a cat person,” Guerrero said. “I’d rather a dog cafe.”

NYU students can also feel pride in supporting the cafe because it is devoted to helping animals in the community.

“We are super passionate about animal rescue” Mikhly said. “We use the cafe to do adoption events, so typically around once a week, there’s a different rescue in the space of adoptable dogs looking for homes. And we’re super proud of the connections that we’ve made between customers and rescues.”

Email Faith Marnecheck at [email protected].