Mucho Gusto, Señor Dewey

By Fred
Dewey and I made our first visit to Casa Tina, a very dog-friendly restaurant in Dunedin. Today was the first day of our soon-to-be normal routine, walking up and down Main Street, waiting at the traffic lights and crossing from one side to another.

By the time we get to the restaurant, the puppy is usually tired, and I can eat my lunch in peace. At this age (Dewey's age, not mine), I can hear the whispers from the other tables about what a good little puppy and so on, and I allow myself to feel proud of him, because why not?

A picture of Dewey with his coat. He doesn't want to leave.

Dewey can be so incredibly good and comfortable. He rolls up into a perfectly relaxed little ball, with no awareness of the world, even in a restaurant like this with smells and bits of food on the floor, there he was under the table in perfect shavasana. Considering some of Cheryl's stories about Dewey at school, I wondered if he would want to leave when the time came.

But he did get up. Slowly. And we made our way to the exit. And then he just stopped and sat down a few feet from the door. It was soon clear that he did not intend to be coaxed, happy-voiced, tempted, bribed, nudged, or intimidated to move from that spot. I put a treat on the floor--nothing. A little girl happened to be at the door and she called to him in a sweet little voice, puppy, puppy, here puppy, but he didn't care, not even a little. And he has this look on his face...

So I picked him up and walked out.

Where are you pooping?

LUNCH

Summer vacation for us means that we are going out to eat.  Fred recently celebrated his 60th birthday and he received a lovely present of a Visa gift card of $60 dollars, which we decided to use at the Sand Pearl Resort to have a nice lunch out.

Fred and Coach relax by the player piano at the Sand Peal Resort in Clearwater.

The Sand Pearl is pretty hoity-toity and even though it is a dressy place, we decided that we would take Coach with us.  After all, he is 15 months old.  Old enough to go poo beforehand and know how to behave himself in a restaurant.  Right?

We decided that we would park a bit of a distance away from the Pearl and walk in just to make sure that he had a chance to poo.  We walked out to lone bit of grass that bordered the entrance to the beach and Coach did his little circle dance.  It was a three twirler.  Oh my!

We walked up to the Sand Pearl with confidence.  Our boy had pooped.  We were poop free and ready to eat and experience the high life.  (And people wonder why we don't go out much! 8-)

After walking through the lobby, we encountered the player piano.  It was doing an admirable job of toodling through some barely recognizable tunes, so I had Fred and Coach stand beside it for a photo.  Coach didn't see too impressed with it.

Lunch was delicious.  The hostess was very impressed with Coach.  Coach was on his best behavior and entered and exited with calm assurance.  Nicely done, Coach!

DINNER

Dinner was different.  We decided to take Jammers with us and go coatless and more informal: to the Dunedin Smokehouse!

Now, we love the Smokehouse for several reasons

1. They have amazing wings.
2. They have a great beer selection (Magic Hat)
3. Our favorite waitress is there (Lisa) and she loves Coach and Jam
4. They have a big patio that allows dogs 
5. All the staff brings water bowls
6. Coach in coat is treated like a king
7. The rest of their food rocks too!

So, it's a natural for us to go there with the boys.  We usually pick a table by the railing and under the awning and since they had the fan on, by the fan.  We were lucky.  We got all three tonight:

• Table by the railing
• Table in the shade
• Table right in front of the fan!

The boys were out of everyone's way.  It was cool, the wings were hot, the beer was cold.  Awesome.

And then, the poodle man showed up.

Really.  

It was a family.  A mom, two middle school kids and a dad.  They had a poodly-doodly thing.  But essentially, Dad was a poodle man.  I saw them coming down the sidewalk and I knew trouble was coming in caramel curls.

Poodle man peeled off from the pack and pulled the doodle into the empty field that sits next to the Smokehouse.  The empty field that borders the railing along which we were sitting. Jam had spotted them.  He sat up.  

"Hmmmmmm." I said.  Grrrrrr was what I was thinking.  Poodle man was walking up the empty field following the railing like a trail. His doodle was sniffing around.  Jam was standing now.  Mind you, we are eating.  "Fred," I said.  "Grab Coach. This man is bringing his dog!"

And poodle man stops.  Doodle stops.  And the world stops. 

Jam thrusts his whole head through the bars of the railing in an attempt to get to the doodle.  He makes it to his shoulders.  He is straining.  The doodle is straining too, but it is of a different sort.  

"Oh my God!" I am actually hissing. "Fred! Is that dog pooping?"

"Yes."

I turn back around and poodle man has a baggy out to scoop up the offending poo.  I cannot catch his eye to scald him with my irritated look.

"Really?" I turn to Fred. "Really?!"

Fred with Jam and Coach sitting at his feet as Fred frowns thinking
about the rude customer at the Dunedin Smokehouse.

 Of all the places to walk your dog to poo, you walk him in front of the people with dogs, who are eating in a restaurant.  You had an entire empty field.  And you chose to have him poop 2 feet from our table.

Really? I. Don't. Have. The. Words.

If only I was Amy Poehler.

No Poo at Dinner!

Last night we took a chance and took the baby out to dinner.  Some nights he doesn't poo until 10 pm, but we have been very vigilant about taking him right out after dinner and then using the commanding voice to see if he will poo and last night we were successful!  Why do I mention specifically a "commanding voice"?

We were told a story at one of our meetings about some veterans in Southeastern's Paws for Patriots program who were working with their assistance dogs and one veteran was listening while another was working with his newly acquired dog.  After listening to him for a bit, he jumped in and said, "Soldier, are you asking your dog or telling him?"

I think about that story a lot.  Mostly because I don't naturally have a commanding voice.  So, I now find myself trying all sorts of different voices when I am out there with Coach because maybe, just maybe, that voice wasn't commanding enough. Perhaps it should be deeper. A bit more stern. No, that didn't work.  How about not so deep, but definitely serious. It's like the actor's studio in our back yard. I should add accents.

OMG.  The nuanced Busy Busy command. Honestly! Coach is my first puppy to mark the distinction between command and normal and happy voices.  He's very smart.

Back to dinner.  We had a 5 pm dog dinner and a 5:10 poo. Woot!  In the real world, people don't talk about poo this much, but in a Southeastern Guide Dog puppy raiser world, poo is very much on our minds: when they last pooped, have they pooped, was it a good poop, etc.  I had no idea I was going to care this much about excrement when I started this gig.

Anyway, since we had our poo, we were good on poo at least for a couple of hours, if not the rest of the evening.  The girls were arriving at 6 and Fred was able to elicit a pee at 5:55 (Fred's commanding voice comes very easily).  Coach is rather like a horse, saving it all up for one tremendously long pee that must be terribly satisfying for him.  Mind you, this is in spite of being taken out and given opportunities to pee. Again, commanding voice or my lack thereof! 

Lauren, Allison, Cheryl and Amber with Casa Tina's in the background.  I have Coach in front of me and have my arms circling him.

So here we are outside of Casa Tina's before our successful dinner outing. Allison's camera has given us a very flattering soft focus, and Coach is a bit of dark blur at the bottom.  But rest assured, he was awesome at dinner and slept through almost all of it.

Breakfast at Lenny's: A Casual Sunday Visit

Fred and Coach walking past the Lenny's sign.

Sunday we made a breakfast date with friends so they could meet Coach. We arrived and entered Lenny's in Clearwater (an amazing breakfast restaurant!) with a much more confident feeling because this time when we took him to busy, he did his business. Seems he likes us to say "Busy! Busy!" with a much more definite and commanding tone of voice. 

Michele, Erik and Kelland had gotten us a big booth and were waiting for us.  Since we have take our Southeastern Guide Dog puppies to Lenny's before, they know all about them and have never had a problem with them. So, we had a tasty breakfast while Coach got to sleep on Michele's feet.  Overall, Coach stayed asleep or on a down stay in the booth with no napkin stealing!

Erik and Willow watch from the deck as Coach and Fred look into the Koi pond. Coach is leaning over the pond.

After breakfast, we went back to house so they could love on Coach.  In the above photo, Coach is looking for the Koi fish in the pond.  He spotted them on Saturday night and has been very interested in them ever since.  I'm thinking it is only a short time before we have a full fledged dunking.

Kelland and Coach in a moment of calm. Coach is chewing a nylabone and Kelland is scratching his back.

Kelland and Coach had  great time playing fetch.  Coach does a weird little pounce right before he lands on the item he is fetching and brings it back.  Quite cute.

Michele is scratching Willow, who is deeply appreciative!

Willow has been ignoring Coach for the most part, but this morning she decided that perhaps she needed to start getting involved.  So, she inserted herself for petting and, when Kelland was playing fetch with Coach, she strategically blocked off the throwing route by standing in the way.  She still won't play with Coach, but they are at least touching each other and being friendly.

Coach made sure to make the rounds to everyone's lap.  Here he is with Michele.

Of course all of this playing and fetching had a deep affect on Coach for the rest of the day.

Hound down! Coach is asleep, on his back and falling off his bed.

Same pose, a little closer. 8-)

Ooops! Did We Just Poop on Your Floor?

They say that sometimes when bad things happen, time slows down or your life flashes before your eyes.  What happened to me is that all sound ceased.  It was as if I existed in a perfectly silent bubble.

We had walked into the restaurant, with Coach and a former student who was visiting us and we were being shown to a table right in the middle of the dining room.  A table right in the middle of the dining room is usually never a good thing and why I didn't stop the girl right there and say, "This won't work, we need a booth." I don't know.  But I let her show us to the table.

She walked off and Allison walked over to her chair.  I pulled out my chair and Fred was about to pull out his chair when all of a sudden he said those word you never want to hear inside of a building, "Coach pooped."

And all the sound went away.  I turned and grabbed what was nearest: a cloth napkin.

I know! A cloth napkin! What was I thinking?  I had a big bag in my purse filled with shamwows and towels and ziploc bags and antibacterial wipes, but I was thinking THERE ARE PEOPLE EATING FOOD IN HERE AND I CAN'T LET THEM SMELL POO!

So I swoop down on the three sticks of poo and in my no sound world, the white napkin drifts down over the poo mountain like a little cloud.  There.  All. Gone.  I scoop it up and race away to the rest room.

I am shaking all over.  I zoom into a stall and start to empty the poo into the toilet.  Am I nuts?  What then? Am I going to rinse it out in the toilet?  Am I going to stick my hands in the toilet?  Holy crap, I'm still holding this poo napkin!  I look around in a panic and spot the sanitary napkin waste dispenser.  I shove the poo napkin in there.

I power walk back to the table.  Sound has returned.  Allison looks at me and says, "There's a little more poo under Fred's chair."

Crap on toast.  More poo?  I get out the anti-bacterial wipes and look around the room.  Everyone is eating and chatting and seemingly unaware that a mere three feet away from them there had been poo.  Thank the Gods above! I wipe and wipe and wipe the tile with anti-bacterial goodness.  I get the extra poo and wipe with more anti-bacterial goodness.  There is no poo smell, but my hands are filled with poo stained wipes.

Maybe a minute has gone by. Fred and Coach have disappeared and not returned.

By now, all the diners in our dining room must think I have a bathroom problem.  Some weird sort of intestinal disease that makes me run off several times during a meal or that I'm OCD and feel the need to fling my napkin on the floor, throw it away and then scrub the floor clean with anti-bacterial wipes before eating.  Whatever, as long as they don't realize that it was poo, I'm OK with being the crazy, nut job lady they tell their friends about over drinks at the bar later in the evening.

I race back to the restroom.  There is a woman in my stall.  MY STALL.  Rather, the stall with the poo napkin in it.  I go to another stall.  I toss out my nasty wipes and madly wash my hands over and over and over.  Then I look around for towels.  They have one of those Dysen Air Blades.  Oh Man!  We would have been screwed if we didn't have our own supplies!!!

The lady in my poo napkin stall comes out.  I sneak out of my stall and then go into the poo napkin stall.  It occurred to me that the poo napkin might start to become, well, odorous.  I started having visions of people coming in and sniffing and saying, "Something has died in here!"  And then going and getting management.  And then management wandering around the bathroom trying to figure out where the horrible smell was coming from until finally, they opened the sanitary napkin container and saw: poo napkin! Then it would be just a short step to wondering, "How did this get here?  Who pooped in our napkin?" And then they would think about the only missing napkin that night.

And it would be mine.

Therefore, I had to keep the poo napkin.  Fortunately, I carry ziploc baggies with me and so I just grabbed the poo napkin and shoved it into a ziploc and then into my supply bag.  I went back to the table where Fred and Allison wanted to know what we should do.

We decided that retreat was the better part of valor.  So we left and Fred called the restaurant and explained to management what had happened and apologized.  They were more concerned that Coach was ok.

They didn't want their napkin back.

Restaurant Feng Shui

Sometimes you can just tell whether a new restaurant is going to be a good place or not.  It may be the food, the service, the atmosphere or something indefinable about the place.  Let's call it the feng shui.  Well, last night we found a great place in Cafe de Paz in Dunedin.

We had reservations for 7 pm and unfortunately for us the place was packed and there was no way we were going to get our table.  But our waitress kindly served us a round of drinks on the house and we sat and chatted while we listened to a very good duo (keyboards and vocalist) sing standards ranging from Billy Joel to old blues songs.  Fred liked them and he is hard to please.

As we were waiting, our waitress, who was as cute as a bug's ear, came over and asked if Jam would like a bowl of water.  Now, nothing endears a restaurant or server faster to me more than sincere affection for our guide dog puppy.  Usually we get grudging acceptance, or a not so subtle attempt to shift us to the outside as in the "Oh, I'm sure you want the patio table" when it is 10 below (or in Florida terms, 70 degrees!).

Being told I want a patio seat, makes my desire for an indoor seat grow exponentially. I could have gone to that restaurant expressly for their ocean views and when those words pop out of their mouth, all of sudden I am filled with the desire for air-conditioned, four-walled, stuffiness.

"Why, no.  Whatever do you mean, outside? It's freezing." Never mind that I am wearing a tank top, shorts and flip flops. "I am in need of an inside table.  I have allergies and can't be near the surf and sea air." Direct stare into their eyes.

Of course there are amazing moments when others at the restaurant intervene for you.  That happened at the Crabby Bill's on Clearwater Beach.  The host said the deadly patio phrase and the female bartender nearly leaped over the bar. "That's a service dog!" She shouted and raced out towards us from behind the bar.  She ran over to the host and yanked the menus out of his hands.  "Please follow me upstairs." Then she turned and gave him the evil, "you and I will have a long talk about just how stupid you are" look, to which this 6'2" pretty buff guy actually blanched.  We followed the petite gal up the stairs to a nice table in the center of the dining room and had a great dinner.

But I digress.  Back to Cafe de Paz.  We were finally seated and a very fashionable and sweet hostess came over with a bowl of water for Jam.  We had to explain that he couldn't have it since he was on duty and couldn't drink in coat, but we were so thankful for her kindness.

Honestly, this restaurant rocks.  And the food was awesome!  Tapas, pizzas with gourmet toppings, crostinis, very unusual dishes and everything we tried was great.  Except for Fred's pizza.  It had clams on it and I thought that was weird.  But Fred and Ken liked it.

Afterwards, we went over to Ken and Linda's for a casual dessert, so I can't tell you about the dessert offerings at the restaurant.  However, I do want to give a shout out to our lovely friends Ken, Linda and Carrie who really are the most kind, caring and patient people and who put up with so much from us.  We are so lucky to have them in our lives.  Not only did Carrie not make a face when Jam grabbed her scarf and completely shoved it in his mouth, attempting to run off and devour it, she kindly put it back around her neck, dog slobber and all, so he wouldn't be tempted to try for it again.  And Ken and Linda, who had been dying to pet Jam all evening, waited at least 20 minutes for wanker Jam to calm down enough in their house to be petted.

What troopers.

And need we mention that we talked about Jam so endlessly that at one point I looked up and Ken was actually asleep?  Well, that is true friendship.  We promise to curb ourselves next time!!  Thanks for letting us run on last night.  We truly enjoyed ourselves.

May you all have friends like these and find restaurants like Cafe de Paz to take them to dinner!

Cheesecake Factory!

Bingo had a HUGE day today. We went to school for a meeting. He was very good, slept through most of the meeting, which in his case was a good thing. 8-) We didn't have any accidents on campus, although he did get a little nuts in Sarah's office. After that Christy and I left with him for his first major public excursion: Cheesecake Factory. We parked in the underground parking and took the elevator up. It was his first elevator ride and he was not impressed. Then we got to the upper level and walked to Cheesecake. I had a fully stocked bag filled with cleaning supplies in case of accidents. We walked right into the lobby where Bingo charmed the hostesses. He was a bit put off by the noise and started to walk a bit slowly, but the tail was still wagging. I could also hear the cries of several kids, "Look a puppy!" but all seemed to be progressing smoothly until we started to walk through the bar out to the patio. That's when Bingo hit the floor with the crumbs. Bingo went from slow walk to standstill with quivering nose and tongue out. But I did a quick correction and he hopped to it and we got out to the patio and got set up.

This is Bingo and Christy at the end of the meal. It was a hot day and he was ready to go home. He did a great job. He slept mainly under my side of the table, but wandered over to Christy's side on occasion. He never barked or was bothersome. He was perfectly mannered and beautifully behaved. All at 11 weeks old! Such a sweetie.

Here he is with Willow. They are getting along better and better with each passing day. Here she is actually letting him touch her for a prolonged period.

The morning and lunch outings really took it out of him though. He was pretty much wasted the rest of the day. He'll be a sleepy baby tonight. Yea! On another note, I received that photo from my friend I was waiting for on the Spanish moss incident. There is one house on our block that has some oak trees that have oodles of Spanish moss and whenever we walk by, Bingo grabs for the mass of moss as if it is a pile of spaghetti he can eat. And at every pile of moss, we have to stop and say "drop it" and then open his mouth and get him to drop it, because of course, what puppy wants to spit out a perfectly good mouthful of Spanish moss? What are you crazy?