Small dog apparel: it lets you dress up your dog in cute designer dog clothes, it’s fun, it helps your chihuahua stay warm on cool nights by wrapping her in a layer of chihuahua clothes, and it makes stalkers out of perfect strangers at the grocery store.
Let me explain.
As a pet fashion enthusiast, I collect a lot of pet apparel for my little chihuahuas. Sometimes it’s a cute dog fashion coat from the Chihuahua Shop here; other times, it’s something from the luxury dog clothes for small dogs line of another online boutique. But either way, when my chihuahuas leave the house, they are well dressed!!
Well when I leave the house with my dogs, they’re usually dressed up in some of their best dog clothing. And, as it happens, when I go grocery shopping, I like to sneak my chihuahua Namaste into the store with me, to do a little spontaneous and covert K-9 grocery shopping! I usually slip her into my backpack after we step out of the car and we’re walking through the parking lot to get to the store, walk in, and then place her in that little top shelf of the buggy cart, on top of the backpack and using it as a pillow while I wheel her around and do my thing, usually without any store employees noticing (important).
So yesterday, we’re walking through the parking lot, she has her adorable chihuahua clothes on, and as I pick her up to put her in the backpack so I can sneak her in past through the door guard person here at the local “Mega” here in Puerto Vallarta, down here in Mexico, this rather large woman in pink sweat pants and a huge leopard-print visor comes charging from around this parked minivan and starts gushing about how cute Namaste is and how she has small dogs of her own, and how she loves to dress them up in yorkie clothes, and this and that and the entire kitchen sink of a conversation! I couldn’t get a word in as she walked beside me and I stuck Namaste into my backpack.
“Are you going to sneak her in?!” she announced to the entire neighborhood in her screechy voice. “I hope so,” I smiled back, now nearing the door and about to walk through. She had this look of excitement like she was going to explode or something: what is it about the mixture of chihuahuas and pet clothes that makes people loose it like this? I could see if she had never seen puppy clothes on a little dog before, but this is a person who lives with yorkies, who dresses them up in their dog coats and dog sweaters frequently, I presume. So what’s the deal with her squeal? Lol, I have to have fun with it: I’m only joking because this woman was super over the top with her adoration for Namaste and the small dog apparel she was wearing.
Anyways, I get into the store and I’m shopping around, the woman has left do to her shopping, and the usual mixture of kids and assorted other shoppers are noticing and coming up to pet the fashionable and increasingly famous chihuahua, Namaste. I’m walking through the pet supplies isle, looking to see what they have in the way of small dog collars and if they have any pet couture collars like the last grocery store I visited did (I couldn’t believe it!), when the woman sees me again and start billowing out about how cute she looks atop my grocery cart. This is not good. Now everybody is looking and staring, including the store staff.
I quicken my pace and give this jovial woman another quick smile and a knod, trying to break away, but she seems to keep following me around the store from isle to isle! She goes on and on, talking about the beds for smaller dogs and the pet furniture she found at the dog store the other day, and how she likes to use small dog harnesses on her yorkies instead of a leash. She starts talking about her shopper’s appetite for petite dog clothes–something I can relate to–so I stop my shopping for a minute to talk with her about chihuahua clothes and the Chihuahua Shop I run here, and as it turns out, she’s actually a cool person who takes good care of her dogs.
Unfortunately, it’s at this point when I spot the grocery store floor manager over the shoulder of my new, round, pink, small dog fashion enthusiast friend, and he’s walking toward us, and he doesn’t look very happy. It turns out that bringing your little dog into the store, even when she stays inside the little seat in the push cart and no matter how cute she looks in clothes for little dogs, is in violation of store policy, and I would have to take her out. And so I did …after a series of zig-zags through a few isles and a quick stop through the checkout line 😉
Perhaps that’s one of the better parts of shopping for small dog apparel online: you don’t have to deal with “store policy” like this and you can have your chihuahua right there with you, browsing through the small dog clothing to your heart’s content. If you’re looking for clothes for your small dog, check them out at the Chihuahua Store, and I’ll speak to you again really soon, probably with another weird story involving sneaking my chihuahuas into places where you’re not supposed to have them! -Mikey
