Dogs in Public

I got home last night. Home!

Kathi met me at the airport and had brought some steaks to grill for dinner. I was dead tired (no, I didn’t get any sleep on the plane) so I dropped out of reality way too soon. This morning I was back at it, trying to get a bunch of stuff done before going on vacation next week. I was up early and ran into the office. I then started backing-up my computer so that it can be re-built and upgraded on Monday.

Kathy and I went out to lunch this afternoon and sat outside on a nice patio watching an unescorted kid make himself generally unwelcome on the patio. It made me think of the pubs in the United Kingdom. One of the first things I noticed was that people bring their dogs into pubs. In the US this would never, of course, happen. Health codes being what they are and all. They also bring children into the pubs, and mostly the children behave themselves. They seldom, for example, take-up one of the choice tables by themselves while the rest of the family eats inside. The kid also allowed his ice cream to melt through the mesh of the table to leave a white, creamy puddle below. In the UK most places require you to keep your dog in a lead. That would have been a good rule today for this kid.

Dogs in Pubs

With the exception of once, I have not ever seen dogs run wild in a pub. The one exception that I know if is at The Red Lion pub in Thames Ditton. Here, there is a pub dog. The publican’s black Labrador retriever is allowed the run of the bar. Any other dogs that come in are often entertained by the lab. It is a little like having both a human and a canine publican!

We went into the pub before curry Friday and there was a local visiting dog that was being entertained by the Canine Publican. Please pardon the low quality of the picture; I took it with my PDA and the lighting was not very good. It was fun to see that the dogs had made friends and were playing nicely together. I’d best get back to my preparations for vacation now.

I hope wherever you are, it is with friends.

Don Bergquist - 15-May-2005 - Lakewood, Colorado