A Grand Adventure

This past Saturday was the Grand Opening of a PetSmart near us. We took Phil. It was a grand adventure. He'd never been to a PetSmart before. We got there early to take advantage of special offers...like a free nail trim and a free portrait--the one you see above (with me edited out, of course). It was wild. There were lots of dogs everywhere. We met another greyhound...a female red brindle. There were bulldogs, pugs, poodles, labs and goldens. There were others too. It was quite the madhouse.

Phil particularly liked checking out the food aisles and the treat aisles. I had to pay particular attention there as I feared he may just start helping himself to rawhides as we walked along. As we stood waiting to have our portrait done, someone started vigorously squeaking a toy a few aisles over and Phil's ears went straight up. His ears are very expressive. I thought they got a great shot of him in the picture because they got the ears out and the head tilt.

The head tilt is one of my favorite expressions. Of course, it's good that he only uses the head tilt when he's feeling quizzical, as opposed to having a permanent one. He had a stroke this past year, and the vet that treated him cautioned us that his head tilt may very well be permanent. He's had a remarkable recovery and seems to be doing quite well. He received terrific care at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at NCSU. Those folks are absolutely terrific. I can't say enough good things about them.

We didn't buy too many things, but did get Phil a new Kong dental toy. It's one of the ones that you can hide treats in. He was really giving it a working over yesterday afternoon. I'm not sure whether he really liked it, or whether it was ticking him off!

We ran a few errands on the way home and Phil was great about waiting patiently in the car. Later on, Phil sang the Carolina fight song with LoML and helped pull them through to the Final Four. Go Heels! All in all, it was quite the happy day.