2 scared dogs & nail painting - only at Petsmart

Yesterday, we took Lucy to Petsmart, which is always an adventure. The one in this area has a "doggie day camp" that you can view through glass. The room was pretty small and full of a lot of dogs ranging from 1 scared chihuahua to 2 extremely large Labradors. My heart sank when I saw the chihuahua standing there alone in the center of the room, shivering and holding his tail between his legs. His face looked so concerned that I felt myself get angry at the Petsmart staff for traumatizing this dog. I was about to barge in and give them a piece of my mind when Stuart insisted that keep shopping and that the dog would be alright. At most - responsible - doggie day camps, like CampBowWow, they separate the dogs based on size which just makes sense.

I snapped a few pics from my iphone that I'll post here later.

The adventure continued. As we were turning the corner out of an aisle, we were surprised to see a woman and two very large mastiffs! 1 mastiff sniffed Lucy happily and slobbered all over Lucy's ear. It was cute. Lucy sniffed back, tail wagging. All was good. Then the other Mastiff wanted to greet Lucy. Lucy's tail was wagging and she playfully jumped up a bit. That Mastiff growled a bit and then suddenly pulled away with his tail between his legs. I was surprised to see a scared Mastiff, especially next to a small 25 pound dog like Lucy.

Then we made a short visit to the fish section, where Stuart selected some more fish for his fish pond. Lucy was bored, so I took her for a walking tour around the store while Stuart shopped. She seemed to love sniffing every shelf. True to her terrier nature, she kept trying to climb UNDER the shelving, which I tried to discourage. She did catch me off guard when she hunkered down and crawled through a large cat toy installation! My dog Lucy who likes cat jungle gyms - that cracked me up.

And just when I thought our adventure was over and we were checking out, I noticed that they had a "doggie spa" in the front. I saw a medium sized white short haired dog leashed and a Petsmart employee leaning over her paws. I couldn't believe my eyes. The employee was painting the dogs nails bright red. I told Stuart that I had to investigate. I took Lucy with me and walked into the "dog spa" and asked the lady upfront, "I'm just curious but are you actually painting that dog's nails? Does the owner actually want that?" One employee shot back a comment, "Don't be judgemental." That surprised me and I laughed, "You're right, I am being judgmental but I just have never seen or heard of this before and I wanted to know about it."

The young woman still painting the nails looked up at me and said, "Yeah, the owner wants it and it only costs $3, so what's the big deal."
"Interesting," I said, "Tell me that the dog is a female one at least...not that that matters."
"She is a girl," she replied. "But what is unusual about this is the breed of dogs. Most women have their poodles or Chihuahua's nails done, not a larger pit bull like dog like this one."
At this point Stuart had walked in behind me.
"Crazy," I whispered, as he looked over my shoulder at the nail painting. He smiled.

I said my good-byes and we headed out of Petsmart - a place full of strange and interesting small adventures.

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