Saturday, December 17, 2005

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.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is too cute! I finally got to see two things: Dave with a beard; and Dave as a fat man. Nice.
Way to be a good samaritan, btw.
ML :)

Mon Jan 16, 08:43:00 PM CST  

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