Santa Part II

The pet charity asked me again to fill in as Santa for its weekend photo shoot, so I donned the fat suit once more. This time, we were smart enough to get our own dog to PetSmart for a photo with the fat man.

The problem we didn’t see coming was that Gracie, the golden retriever who loves everyone, was terrified of St. Nick. You would have thought I was dressed as a dog catcher or the vet.

Scratch that, Gracie loves the vet. She loves everyone.

Except Santa.

I posed with 30 other dogs today and a few seemed a bit uneasy around the bright red suit, fake beard and the guy that smelled like 30 other dogs. Gracie was panicked.

Perhaps she was confused because Santa smelled like me but looked like someone else, but I posed with other dogs that I have known out of uniform, and we had no problems.

Not Gracie Pooch. She was terrified, so much so that she slipped her collar – which she had never done – and ran away from Santa and Mrs. Claus and into the arms of the nice lady who was handing out promotional materials for Nutro dog food.

There are few feelings more pitiful and lonely than seeing your own dog fear you.

And yet I couldn’t stop laughing.

Gracie – a former valedictorian of PetSmart puppy school – would go to anyone else who called her, including the PetSmart dog trainer, as a large mob gathered to mock Santa and his scaredy-cat dog. She relaxed when I took the gloves off and let her smell my hands, and she gave them a few good licks. But she wasn’t about to get on Santa’s lap. Finally, when no small children were looking, I took off the fake beard so she could see my face. This calmed her somewhat, but she still wouldn’t sit for a photo.

Finally, I remembered that this was the dog who would do anything for a treat – even sit next to scary Santa long enough to snap off a few photos. Once she got a few treats in her, she even let The Wife put a pair of reindeer antlers on her for some more photos.

In the spring, maybe we’ll see how she feels about the Easter Bunny.

Here comes Santa Fraud ...

The pet charity The Wife and I volunteer with has an annual fund-raiser in which they dress some poor slob like Santa Claus and let customers at the local pet store have their pets’ photo taken with a counterfeit Kringle for $9.95, with $5 going to the charity and the rest covering the store’s expenses.

Last Sunday, the charity was short a Santa, so it ended with a short Santa. That’s right, I was the poor slob in the hot, itchy costume. I didn’t mind. In fact, it was kind of fun. I just don’t think I was the right man for the job. I’m not as svelte as I used to be, but at 150 pounds, my belly doesn’t shake like a bowl full of jelly – yet.

I put on the costume, and it reminded me of walking around in my dad’s shoes when I was a kid. It wasn’t quite tailored for my form, so I walked out to the dog aisle, snagged a pet bed and stuck it in my pants. The extra padding helped the illusion a bit, but I still looked like Santa on meth.

I still managed to fool a lot of little kids, who smiled, laughed, waved and begged me to say “Ho, ho, ho.”

Kids are stupid.

The photo op lasted from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., which meant five hours in the fat suit. The coat was so scratchy that I left my sweatshirt on underneath. After putting on a wig, fake beard, hat and gloves while listening to the painfully bad music the store plays incessantly, I was sweating to the oldies.

The good news is we sold more than 30 photo packages. The even better news is that none of our subjects peed on me or tried to take a bite out of Saint Nick. I also was happy that when I walked outside to cool off in the crisp December breeze that my borrowed dog bed, which I had forgotten about, did not set off the anti-theft device.