Duke goes to Petsmart
Duke had his first Petsmart experience. Walking through the parking lot was a little bit of a challenge, but inside the store he did great. We walked in and went to find the doggy goggles. Of course I couldn’t find them, so I walked to the front of the store and asked where the goggles were. The workers looked at me as if to say, “Why does that little puppy need goggles?” The lady politely asked if I was looking for ones for swimming or what my exact needs were. I answered “he’s blind, so we need to protect his eyes in the woods.”
Their demeanors changed instantly and one lady led me over to the goggles. They asked a few questions and were very surprised at the fact that Duke is blind. I explained in further detail why he needed goggles. Izzy likes to walk through the woods and Duke likes to follow her. When we didn’t know about Duke’s blindness, we would let him go with Izzy. We want him to still be able to explore, but we need to protect his eyes. When you walk through the woods and you see a branch coming near you, you automatically blink because you want to keep your eyes safe. Duke won’t blink because he won’t know the branch is there until he runs into it. The goggles help to avoid injuries to the actual eyeballs.
After talking to the very nice Petsmart lady, Duke was whining like most puppies do. I could tell he was getting nervous because there were so many new sounds and smells. Plus Duke is a talker anyways. We continued shopping throughout the store. By that point I had picked baby Duke up. A few people came up to me asking about Duke simply because all puppies are cute. Some of them I told about his blindness. Others I did not. I’m not sure if it is necessary to share with everyone that he is blind. This is a very new, wonderful and hard experience, just like his first trip to Petsmart. We are all in this together and we love our baby Duke so much.