Paxton goes shopping

Hubby and I spent part of Saturday morning at Lowe’s Home Improvement picking out new laminate hardwoods for our family room. This was no ordinary trip to Lowe’s, however. Hubby suggested we bring Paxton the dog to tag along on our journey. He said that he had been told by Mike (a department manager at Lowe’s) that dogs were always welcome for home improvement shopping.
Now you know I’m the first to disagree on matters such as these, but after seeing dogs in both Kinko’s and Nordstrom, I made it my plan to grant Paxton the dog the same opportunities as other dogs. Plus, Lowe’s is a good starting ground for this dogs-in-public-places experiment. It has solid concrete floors, wide aisle ways, and the absence of food and clothing products.
So hubby, Paxton and I took the plunge on Saturday morning. Everyone at Lowe’s absolutely adored him. He was fairly well behaved, though not ideal. There was quite a bit of forceful leash pulling on his end and some unusual jumping up on hubby and myself. He was probably just utterly confused.






We left Lowe’s after scheduling a contractor visit to the house and then headed on to our weekly wine tasting at Wine Authorities. Paxton waited patiently in the car during the 15-minute tasting.
As we were wrapping up tasting the last of four wines, a store employee approached us and said, “You know, you can bring your dog inside the store next time. He doesn’t have to sit in the car.”
I’m sure Paxton would treat the wine store with respect, what with its well-organized stacks of wine bottles, neat arrangements of freshly polished wine glasses, cooled case of perfectly-pungent local cheeses, crispy loaves of bread and trays of salty cured salami on display for tasting.
He may be a good dog, but he’s not that good. I think tormenting him with the aroma of those items might be even more punishment than having him wait in the car for 15 minutes.