Why do people shop with dogs?

When did it become acceptable to bring your dogs in to a retail store? Lately, what once seemed to be an occasional event, a couple of people a week shopping with their dogs, has turned into a torrent of canine shopping companions. It seems that more customers than ever feel no hesitation at all about marching into my store with their dog in tow.

When I first noticed people bringing in their dogs, I though it might be to prevent them from being trapped in a hot car while they shopped. I should have asked myself why the dogs were in the car in the first place. I just assumed that there was a good reason and figured; “Ok, its 103 degrees outside and it’s unsafe to leave a pet in a car for more than three minutes in weather like that”. That was rationale number one.

Rationale number two was that I thought it was because the pets were elderly or unwell. The first pets I noticed in the store seemed to be smaller breeds that their owners pushed around in carts. The dogs all seemed really old, or very sick, or really old AND very sick. I postulated that the owners were nervous about leaving a sick pet alone too long at home. I assumed that the owners would never forgive themselves if dear old Loveee was sent off to Valhalla by the animal version of the Grim Reaper. If the icy hand of death were to reach out for little Loveee (No “Y”, just three “e”’s… an actual name of a frequent canine guest in our store), and no one was there to ease her through the transition to the creature equivalent of an afterlife, the owners would be guilt ridden beyond a capacity they could endure. I don’t completely understand their distress. I would imagine that doggie heaven is a place where you can sniff butts all day long and then roll around in other dog’s poo without ever having to have a bath. .

But then I noted that the dogs went from being small, sick and in carts to being huge, healthy and on leashes. When a customer was dragged around the store by two Alaskan Huskies on leashes like they were competing in the initial stages of the Iditarod, that’s when I ran out of rationales for why the pets needed to be there.

I mean what possible reason could you have for dragging your dog into a store? Pets can’t shop, and even if they could…I don’t think they’d want to.

Shopping is a purely human activity and no matter how intelligent they are, dogs are still animals. Given the chance, dogs will hunt for food, look for a mate and check out places to pee. Other than that, they would pretty just be sleeping. None of the things an animal does naturally is available to them a store.

I had a dog all the while I was growing up. My pet would never get in the car, let alone allow itself to be walked aimlessly around a 150 thousand square foot enclosed structure with nowhere to relieve himself. Good old Charlie would have bitten my leg off just to get out of the place within the first 5 minute of walking into a store.

Even now I live with two dogs, they aren’t mine but belong to my mother in law. They are the most attention starved sentient beings I have ever come in contact with. They need to be the center of everyone’s interest at all times. They are like perpetual two year olds. They are very well cared for and are never left alone for more than a few hours. When left alone, however, even if for only 15 minutes, they maul you at the door like starving prisoners from some rat infested POW camp. And they lack for nothing. Their every whim is attended to by at least one of the 5 people living in the house who are usually there, in some number, 24 hour a day. But still they demand attention.

I think I know why they are so needy. I think it may be because they are actually dogs and not just little people.

Animals have very limited needs. They don’t need to watch football, go to the movies, play video games or download music like my children do. That’s because they are not children, no matter how unconditionally they love. Animals are programmed by a sense of survival that demands that those limited needs are met, without regard to the social setting within which they find them themselves. That’s because they are not people. They drink from the toilet and they go to the bathroom on the ground. They eat until it’s gone and they roll in whatever stinks the most. They do this because that’s what animals do.

They may act like people a great deal of the time. But in the end, they are animals and are not inclined, regardless of how much we want them to be, to spend time in the modern retail store, which is still pretty much designed only for humans.

I’m not the only one who is not totally comfortable with dogs in the retail environment. Not all customers are dog lovers. A customer who frequents the store with her Doberman (whose name I know is Dallas, although I don’t recall the owner’s name) recently spent no less that 35 minutes or so in the plumbing department. She went from aisle to aisle checking out everything from kitchen sinks to shower heads. The entire time she was there, I saw customers dart in and out of the aisle she occupied with her 150 lb charge.

Dallas the Doberman’s ancestors were originally bred as guard dogs due to their ability to withstand attacks from humans.

No mention on Wikipedia on a human’s ability to withstand an attack from a Doberman. This explains why people were fearfully avoiding buying anything from me while a huge dog stood in my toilet aisle

I need to be frank on this point. Pets have no place in a retail store. They can’t buy anything and there is nothing in a store that should be of any interest to a dog.

People bring in their dogs just because they can. They seem to think that animals should have the same rights to shop as people. But animals, no matter how close they may be to your or how much like “people” they act, shouldn’t go shopping because they can’t spend money. At the end of the day, that’s what a store’s is, a place you go to spend money. Buying is a purely human activity. No matter how much you love your pet and believe they are the perfect companion, they literally have no business being in a store.

If you don’t feel the same way as I do, that’s okay. I’ll give you a call the next time there is dog crap to clean up off the floor and then I’ll let you tell me it is no big deal.

For a second, lets think about the dog? They have no interest in the store, in fact I’ll wager that most of them want to get out of their faster than the average three year old. Hell, dogs can’t even entertain themselves by sitting on the lawn tractors.

In many ways it’s actually cruel to bring a dog to a store. We have birds, and squirrels and even a cat that live in the store. The wildlife in our store are thriving in a climate controlled Eden. Aisle 23 is filled with bird seed and deer corn and the fountains on aisle 32 make a perfect watering hole. The squirrels nest overt the cabinets on aisle 37 and the birds have found a home directly over the customer service desk. I think the birds are attracted to the sounds the counting machine makes when it tallies the receipts at the end of the day. Most of the squatting fauna in my store are third generation and I doubt that any could actually survive in the “outside” world.

So the dogs that come into the store find a harshly lit, noisy place with hard floors, strange unnatural smells and wildlife that they can’t chase scurrying about. It must be torture for a dog to have to sit quietly in a cart or to strain unnoticed on a leash while their owners peruse items that, for an animal, have no earthly value.

So let’s make a promise to each other. No matter how much Fido begs to go to my store, you won’t bring them in and I won’t sit behind you at the movies with my colic-ally six month old.