Sunday, January 4, 2009

A Shopping Story

I work at a college and we have been on winter break for the past 2 weeks. So Lani really hasn't had much opportunity to work much, yes we all like to take our dogs every where but dragging her to 2 different malls during the Christmas rush seemed a little mean, AND Eggo has been here too. She knows better, but has been having a hard time remembering that Lani is a working girl and Waffle isn't. In the spirit of egalitarianism both girls have been spoiled rotten, and I have caught Lani on various pieces of furniture. She seems to think 'hey hey schools out' and has forgotten a lot of her rules. Running in the house, jumping on furniture, eating crap off the floor and she has been very solicitous, going up to people looking for lovin'. She responds to the high pitched voice, the cooing, and she hears puppy and knows that it is her. So I've had to cut down seriously on her contact with strangers in public.


So in an effort to get her back on track I took her out to get her focus back. I thought about going to see the rose parade floats, but a day boosting the national economy seemed much more useful-so we went shopping. We went to a couple of different places and she was great, fantastic and amazing... pretty incredible for a lab-ette (she is just a hair over 50lbs at 13months). I took her to the Used Gear sale at REI, Ikea and DSW shoe store. The Used Gear sale was a zoo, and is the real story behind this post.

REI is camping store (think Cabela's minus the guns and dead animals,) and twice a year has a sale where stuff that has been returned is sold at discount prices. I was told to get there early. I figured about 30 min would be enough, but I was out paced by about 100 people, people camped over night to be the first in. WOW - I was looking for a travel bag but by the time I got there they had all been scooped up. Even though you are not supposed to horde stuff, folks run in grab a bunch of stuff and sift through it later, back packs, shoes, clothes, tents, bikes, cooking gear, watches ect....

Anyway Lani and I are just walking around, getting some crowd work in, can you imagine what it must look like for a pup's perspective? Crazy! Plus some people brought their dogs - the sale was in the parking lot. So there are people sitting on the ground trying on shoes, looking at tents and backpacks, items once coveted are tossed away only to be scooped up by someone else, the parking lot was littered with stuff. This woman was stalking me to see if I was going to put down a backpack I had.

Since people are sitting on the parking lot ground right at Lani eye level, I see her leaning in about to give some unsuspecting guy a smooch so I say very sharply "LEAVE IT" well this guy looked up at me kind of shocked and pulled his hand back.... that's when I realized that he was reaching for a pair of shoes and thought I was talking to him :s . Kind of embarrassing is putting it lightly. I quickly explained that I was speaking to the dog and moved away.

*sigh* all I can say is I love my puppies

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