Sunday, April 13, 2008

Redneck Candid Camera

That's the show that I felt like I was on today when I went to dinner with my parents. So we are sitting at our table at a casino restaurant that shall remain nameless, and this man in an electric wheelchair comes in with two other men, both of whom were wearing beat up jeans and wife-beaters. The man was also accompanied by a dog. Now your first thought would be, "hmmm, guy in wheelchair, must be a service dog." But what you need to know about this dog is that it was a fat, black pug. Okay, so maybe the pug is his service dog... Whatever.

As the men proceed to settle in to their booth with the man in the wheelchair at the end of the table, the dog joins the other two men in the booth seat. WHAT? Service dogs don't sit on the booth seats at restaurants. All the while, people in the restaurant kept looking over at the dog, but nobody said anything. Their waitress acted like it was perfectly normal to have pudgy pug sitting at the table.

As the meal progressed, we watched all of the men playfully petting the pug, and the pug bouncing around on the booth seat. Exactly the type of behavior you would expect from someone's pet, and not from a service dog. Still everyone in the restaurant is looking over at this scene, and I can't look away because they are seated directly across from me.

Now you might think that this is the end, but unfortunately it is not. After the men were done eating they requested a takeout box, which they proceeded to put their leftovers in and place on the floor. Then they let the dog loose. They set him on the floor to eat the scraps from the takeout box, which the dog promptly devoured before wandering across the aisle in the restaurant, probably in search of more scraps. When the dog returned, the men dropped a few more French fries on the floor, which apparently appeased the dog because he/she did not wander off again.

It honestly would not have surprised me for some secret camera man to jump out from behind a tree, because the whole scene was just too hard to believe. I guess it really is true when people say that truth is stranger than fiction!

5 comments:

Erica said...

hmmm, how sanitary that sounds. It's kinda've disturbing that the employees didn't ask them to remove their pet

TimmyMac said...

Whenever I witness a redneck moment I let one blow on my redneck shofar . . . WOOooo Pig SOOooiee

digapigmy said...

where was this?

Angel Logan said...

I am a service dog and my mom would never let me on a seat or feed me at a restaurant or let people pet me while I was working.

I would say that you are almost certainly correct that this was not a service dog. Just because someone has a disability doesn't mean that their pet has access rights like a well trained service animal.

Service Dog Sawyer said...

That's so not cool.

If you see something like this again, you can inform the restaurant that they are well within their rights to ask that they remove their dog from the building. Service dog or not, they should not be allowing the dog to act like this.

I am always well-behaved when I'm in public places as a Service Dog...you would NEVER see me acting like that! People like this give real Assistance Dogs a bad name.

~Service Dog Sawyer