Petdumb

The dog and I headed down to North Carolina to visit the in-laws a couple weekends ago. (The wife was trapped in the hospital, here, and couldn't get away.) I was going to help Ma & Pa with a moving project of theirs and Sadie was going so she could attend a proper six dog Dog Party, with the dogs of various aunts, siblings and cousins. She had a blast, drank way too much and got royally filthy in the red NC mud.

On our way out of town, I thought it would be nice to stop and let Sadie have her first visit to Petsmart. I had this image in my head of her getting to walk around the aisles, see all the other dogs and get to pick out her own new dog toy from their selection. The reality of this did not quite work out that way.

From the moment she stepped through Petsmart's automatic doors, Sadie started barking and didn't really stop for about 10 minutes. She barked at the other dogs. She barked at their owners. She barked at people who didn't even have dogs. She barked at fish. She barked at little kids. She barked at old people. And she looked like she'd been in the back of a pickup freshly returned from a good, ol' fashioned session of mud-boggin'. At one point, she barked at the behavior-training lady, who had foolishly attempted to give my dog a treat. Not having any time to hang around, I decided to pull Sadie into an unoccupied aisle before I was hit up for behavior lessons.

That aisle didn't stay unoccupied for long; shortly, an upper middle-aged couple stepped into it, caught a look at Sadie and came over to say hi. Sadie barked and barked and barked and barked, to the point that the lady became offended and said, "Fine! I'm not even going to pet you, then!" and stormed off.

Oh yeah, lady, I thought. Well you don't GET to pet my dog!

Sadie had little interest in the toys and treats. Actually, she had a lot of interest in them, but every time I tried to show her the selection, someone else would come along and she'd have to stop and bark at them. After she scared a little kid, who'd stepped around a corner holding her tiny Schnauzer, I decided to take my bad child to the car so I could shop in peace.

Some hours later, after I'd returned to Borderland with my purchase of new treats, I noticed that the cashier had slipped a dog-behavior class-schedule into my bag.

Grrrrr.