12/16: French chef and dog

The chef's name is Delphine Grapperon, the dog's name is Maude, the restaurant's name is "Le Royal", and they're in Barbizon. The background is a painting of the town's main street.

I had mixed feelings about this one. I was going to save it for an image backlog day, which we haven't had in a long time.

But as I prepared to put up the image I had picked for today, it occurred to me that I just like this picture. I just like it.

In France, dogs are allowed to accompany you in restaurants and all over. And I think that's how it oughta be. You oughta be able to have your dog anywhere you are.

Then the problem is, who defines "cool dog"? All owners think their dog is cool. All owners think their dog should come with 'em everywhere.

I personally am more of a cat person. We have two cats - mine is Tinkerbell, and my sister's is Shadow. Tinkerbell is about the most mellow cat that I've ever met - she's perfectly calm and tame under most circumstances. I think she'd be a good cat to carry around. Shadow, on the other hand, would be a mess. He likes to do his own thing, no matter what. And, of course, dogs are the same way.

Reminds me of that police dog pic we had a while back - with the cat walking in front of all those dogs, and they're just sitting there. If your dog can do THAT, then you can bring it along

Store dogs - and store cats too - are just great. One of the local pet stores is also a doggie-day care and boards dogs, and some of the dogs get to stay out front with the customers if they are well-behaved. So you get to meet different dogs every time.

Most Petsmarts are like that. They have a bunch of animals that they take care of and if they're well behaved, they get to roam the store. It's pretty cool. There used to be a place in Westminster (Carroll County, MD) called "Record & Book Heaven" and they sold... records and books. And tapes & cds. But they had a store cat named Angel and she was just the sweetest thing She'd lounge around on the records and whatnot, and since my sister and I went there so often, lots of times she'd come up to us. It was pretty cool. Yeah, you gotta love store cats

There's enough people with obviously poor control over their *children* (much less side-stream tobacco smoke and cellphone usage) that I don't even want to think about dogs in a public eating place.

A couple of places I used to frequent in St. Louis were like that. One had a cat, the other a dog. I thought it was cool as hell, but there IS one problem. There are a ton of people out there that suffer from allergies, myself being one of them. For some, it is mild. But for others, it can be downright miserable. I love cats, but I am allergic as hell to them. Thankfully, Claritin has me covered. Man...just thinking about a cat right now is making my eyes water.

My other concern of course would be if it were in a food setting. I just do not believe that a pet should be in that setting, not knowing what it could have picked up outside. Most restaurants ban pets anyway, except for seeing-eye dogs.

Cats

We had a store in my neighborhood that had store CATS - lots of them - usually about 6 or 7 at a time. The woman who owned the store ran an cat rescue service. She usually had 10 or so more in the back ready for adoption. People went to the store to see the cats

She got married, and moved to California - the new owner has no cats (after she said she would keep some of them) - I haven't been back.

MOST people who bring their dogs with them everywhere KNOW if their dog behaves - in fact, I think that bring your dog everywhere tends to make them behave.

Me? I'm owned by 2 cats, and would LOVE to get a dog.... Maybe next year

That's true - if you take your dog places, your dog gets more socialized and used to being with people, and is more likely to have bad behaviors corrected.

Re: Cats

Allergies

As somebody who is deathly allergic to cats... if I ever entered a place that was not a store appropriate for cats (read: anything else other than a petstore or veteranarian's office), and there was a cat there, I would probably go see the owner of the store and ask that he request that person and cat to leave immediately.

Just me.

-mike

Re: Allergies