SD Adventures Morning Breakfast

I so enjoy being able to talk about our good experiences. Looking through social media service dog sites/pages it seems you only read about the bad experiences. I do understand that is a good way to relieve stress about a bad situation, but it seems that so few share their good times with their team.

Well, this morning the Wife and I, and Dougal of course, headed into town for our weekly breakfast at Darrell's and then off to the Walmart for our overpriced food for the week. She who must be obeyed also decided she wanted to stop in a local beauty salon for a massively new haircut.

While at Darrell's I overheard one of the other frequent visitors to the diner talking about Dougal and some of the experiences they have watched unfold with the public and other service dogs. Yes, I found myself eavesdropping. But, the patron was telling her friend how she could not believe how many people in public felt that it was just fine to walk up to a service animal and start petting and playing with them. She started telling this guy how she had so many times had to intervein for service dog teams and explained that they could not just walk up on a team and freely start playing with the dog. I turned to face them and said to her "thank you, we really need more people like you around". I think I startled her a little, but we struck up a conversation about it. Was a great talk.

Once we had finished breakfast and got up to leave, Dougal came out from under the table and we started for the door. While en route I heard another customer go "Oh, wow I didn't even notice there was a dog in here!" This is the greatest ever compliment to hear! So very happy!

So we drove over to the salon and dropped the wife off for her haircut and Dougal and I headed to the Walmart for our public adventure in the pits of normal America. Typically I try quietly to slip in, get what I need, and get out as fast as possible. Going into the Walmart has always been a toss-up if we were going to have a good walk or bad. Everything went very well (except the cost at the register) but as we were about to leave I noticed a rather large man with an equally large german shepherd service dog. They had not noticed me but Dougal had noticed them, as went I went to move the leed did not. Dougal was staring so hard! I broke his concentration and he fell into line and we went to leave. Well, walking towards the door the GSD caught wind of us and let out the "I see you bark", just a single bark but enough to scare the bejesus out of me. Looking over at the team the handler's face was red with embarrassment but was in full control of his pup. He mouthed to us "sorry" and I said there was no reason to be, it happens, you are doing perfect. About this time I noticed that Dougal was alerting to me due to the scare I had received and was pulling me to the door. And with that, we were out.

Going to pick up my wife we quickly found that she was not finished, so pulled Dougal out of the car so we could go inside to wait. I really do think the owner wanted to say something when we walked in, but when she found that we were waiting on someone she sat back down. Did notice one of the young beauticians was filming us, trying to be discreet about it, but things like that do not bother me as I know Dougal will do as he is supposed to so no harm, might even go viral on whatever social media she is posting it to. Dougal the Star! But the sit and wait went uneventfully other than that.

In my opinion, these are how good days start off. I really hope you are having a day like this!