Outdoor Dining Mischief

As you may know, Sadie and I spent last week on vacation in Florida. One of the best perks of that vacation location is the warm weather, allowing for outdoor dining. At home in New Jersey, Sadie has never had the chance to eat at an actual restaurant with me. But in Florida we ate at restaurants every night. I really enjoyed Sadie’s company as a dinner companion, but no meal ended without a little Sadie mischief.

For the first half of the trip, Sadie and I stayed at the Portofino Bay hotel at Universal Orlando. There’s a large piazza at the center of the hotel, ringed with shops and restaurants with outdoor tables. It was a perfect spot for eating outdoors with Sadie. Every night my family and I would get food from one of the various restaurants and bring it to a table to eat in the piazza. And that’s when the mischief would begin. As soon as we picked a table and started getting settled, Sadie would begin running back and forth between me and my family members, trying to decide who to sit next to. In the process, she would wrap her leash around tables, chairs, and people until she couldn’t move. She would go under a chair one way, then come back out another, looping the leash around the chair and even roping someone’s feet to their chair. Since it was a large open space with lots of activity and was bordered by water, I wasn’t willing to take her leash off. So I decided Sadie would be better off sitting in a chair than tangling herself around one. I found it a little funny that we had to make sure to get a table for five – four people and one Yorkipoo, but I enjoyed our family dinners.

 The first night Sadie was too excited and couldn’t get comfy on the cold, wrought iron chair. She kept jumping up to look around and occasionally bark at people. I was worried that she was a bit too mischievous for restaurant dining. But by the second night she was calm and happy. I brought her dog bed and blanket and put those on the chair, and she was content to just lay down and people watch while her humans were eating.

For the second half of the trip we stayed at a Westin hotel that had a dog friendly outdoor restaurant. The first time we ate there and the manager saw Sadie sitting on a chair at our table, she brought over a bowl of water for my dog. That made me like the place immediately. By this point of the trip, Sadie was used to sitting at the table at restaurants and we mostly managed to avoid the leash mischief. But Sadie found some new mischief at this restaurant – the smokers. Every once in a while someone would come outside to smoke a cigarette or cigar and would stroll past our table, walking along the beach. Sadie did not appreciate the intrusion of their smells and would start to bark every time she saw them. She got used to not barking at the waiters and other diners, but she insisted on barking at all the smokers every time she saw one. So the last time we ate at that restaurant, I made sure Sadie faced away from the pathway and any passing smoker, putting an end to her mischief and giving us a peaceful end to our vacation.

 This post is part of the Monday Mischief Pet Blog hop hosted by Snoopy’s Dog Blog, Alfie’s Blog, and My Brown Newfies.