I bought a dog cooling mat at PetSmart yesterday. I have no explanation for why I did this other than my own encroaching heat madness, which starts to set in at temperatures higher than 82 degrees.
Buying gimmicky pet stuff is an impulse best suppressed. Pet stuff is a racket. It is mostly garbage and it costs the earth. Puppy shampoo? $26 please! A small crummy bed that your dog will rip to shreds in a month or so? That’ll be $48! Don’t even get me started on the stupid outfits, and this is coming from someone who buys made-to-order clothes FROM THE UK for her funny-shaped dogs. If you are the type of person who might want a dog to dress up, take my advice and get a standard-shaped mutt instead of a dog that looks like it was put together by a committee that didn’t meet very often.
Anyway, the cooling mat. I don’t know why I thought this would be a good idea. Another reason pet junk is a bad use of your hard-earned money is that dogs (well, mine anyway) don’t really care about stuff. Dogs are scavengers who mostly want to eat garbage so you can imagine how much use they have for, like, accessories. Also, in terms of this specific item: My older dog will come home from an hour-long walk in sunny 85-degree weather and beach himself in the hottest, sunniest spot in the yard. The puppy will flatten herself on the hard kitchen floor as long as there is a sunbeam to keep it toasty. These dogs are not cooling mat dogs.
I honestly think I bought the cooling mat because I would like one, so it should not surprise you that I put it on the couch and canoodled with it for about 30 minutes this morning. It is very refreshing! If the dogs continue to ignore it I will get my $40 worth out of it one way or another.
In other dog news: we ventured to a bar patio for some socially distanced beers earlier this week. We have always wanted to be able to bring our older dog to pet-friendly patios, but his extreme friendliness and love for all people makes this impossible. (It’s not a problem that he wants to introduce himself to everyone, but it is a problem that he whines about it constantly.) So we left him at home for a nice rest and took the puppy with us.
I KNOW HOW CRAZY THIS SOUNDS vis-à-vis everything I’ve said about her, but my husband had a notion that she might be a good Patio Dog and as it turns out, he was right. I don’t know if it was because we tired her out at daycare first, or her general “meh” attitude toward strangers, but she was good as gold. It’s a mystery how she can be so good at some things and so brain-meltingly bad at others but I was real proud of that little dog.