So I guess one thing that I’ve learned this weekend is the difference between a pet store and a puppy store. I suppose that I should add further that I’ve been acquainted with the further difference between a puppy store and a puppy bakery.
This weekend I made one of the far and few inbetween dreaded perennial trips to the mall. Malls are just some of the worst areas on affluent Earth. I could rampage on a diatribe concerning the overweight, overly perfumed, exuberantly overdressed, and overall god-awful crapiness describing generally the hostile crowds that frequent this damned invention of capitalistic greedy human ingenuity, but I won’t. Because I’m plugging puppies! Yaaaaay!
A classmate of mine recommended that I check out “the puppy store,” as he so delicately termed it. “Gotta check it out,” he said. “It’s just ALL PUPPIES. And you go and you pet the puppies…and it’s just ALL PUPPIES, that’s all it is. Nothing else. My friends love it. They were like, ‘Gotta’ go to the PUPPY STORE’! You just go and pet the puppies! It’s ridiculous!” How could I resist? He made it sound like a plantation of puppies. *Dies of heart attack due to soft, cuddly daydreams and an overload of cuteness to the imagination.*
Upon finding the store after searching the mall for what seemed like ages (because let’s be honest, how many puppy stores can their be on the planet?) Dima and I realized that we had walked past it many times, but had not noticed its hole-in-the-wall appearance, heightened by the fact that when there are ONE MILLION people all walking in the same exact path as you, good luck finding anything moderately sized. But there it was, its outside store-front painted a blithe pink tinge with, you guessed it, a puppy in the front window.
Walking inside, as is what happened at Dallas & Co., I was once again astonished at how crowded the store was. But this shop is little!, there’s no room for all these people, whereas at Dallas & Co., there’s plenty of room for throngs and throngs. Here…with the puppies, it only takes a handful before you have a mob.
Walking into the store, I immediately became the mall-frequenting bastard that I hate and put my hand over the bars guarding the puppy to pet it. Afterall, from what my class friend had told me, all people do here is pet puppies. Then Dima chastised me and pointed to the very large sign taped to the outside of the bars:
“Please do not pet or feed the puppies! Thanks for your cooperation!”
Goddammit. After retrieving my arm I turned around, only to be accosted by the puppy bakery. Yes, after re-reading the store-sign once we emerged I was able to note that the smaller print stated: “Puppy Bakery” (I am genuinely sorry that I cannot name the store properly by not remembering the full name…Puppy *Something*, no doubt.) In the encasements next to the front counter there were Puppy Ice Cream Cones, Puppy Cannolis, Puppy Cookies, Puppy Cakes, Puppy Fudge, and the insanity goes on like a trippy Willy Wonka puppy chow room. My mouth began to water at the puppy bounty.
Located at the back of the store are where the rest of the real live puppies are…all five of them. This is where the real crowd begins.There are two rooms to the side of the puppy cages, best termed here as ‘petting rooms’, for I can think of no other better description. Inside one room were two college-aged girls with strange nets around their shoes for what I’m guessing serves as a sanitation precaution, petting a (literally) barking mad teeny weeny terrier of some sort. As Dima, myself, and two little kids swarmed around the poor girls’ shining moment with their potential puppy pet, the terrier snarled and quivered and did a whole array of adorable threatening maneuvers, no doubt terrified by its surroundings.
The worst part was listening to the other customers drool over the little pooches in their transparent glass prisons:
“That one’s mine.”
“No…no. That one’s mine.”
And then:
“I’m that one“
“That one’s me!”
WTF? Since when did college-aged students start appropriating the identities of puppies?
Turning around and heading out to exit the store, I took glimpses of the puppy merch: Puppy shampoo (which smells like Herbal Essence) and pet carriers; my favorite being a bright pink dog carrier which read in bold black letters on one side “BITCH”. I was a little distressed by its obvious male counterpart, a black carrier which simply read “STUD”. Not quite as funny OR (thought) provoking. Hrm. (Note: stud is what you say when referring to a male horse…I still feel like there is a flaw in the logistical balance of these two carriers put side by side…)
Finally, after making my closing observations, I took a deep breath in, and headed back out to the stream of chubby smelly humans. I bet by now that you can tell that I have hard time identifying with mall-goers. But I now have a new mental trick to get me through the tough times:
<3,
Jenny
