My Pet Peeve: Pets in the Grocery Store

     Today at Wal Mart I saw two different people with dogs in the store. Neither of them were service dogs. The first one was a filthy little poodle or something like that. It was in the front of the shopping cart and not very well behaved. The people were feeding it and they did not look like they needed a service dog to go shopping. It did not have a blanked in the cart to protect the cart and well, I am sorry but that is where people put their food and I just don't want to put my food where a dog's butt has been. What do creatures do from their butt, we all know and well that is not clean. I am sure other people would not want me to take my grandson to the store, let him sit bear butt in the shopping cart with an unclean rear end.  So why is it ok for people to put a dog there?

     The next person I saw with a dog was a man who had a huge dog on a leash. The man was not blind and the dog was not well behaved either. As the man walked around the store the dog sniffed the food on the shelves. To me that is just not acceptably behavior and a service dog would not do that.

     I went to management and they said there is nothing that they can do, I called the health department and they said there isn't much that can be done. Everyone is so worried about protecting the rights of people with animals but no one seems to care about those of us who do not want to shop for groceries in a "pet" store. They don't want to offend them but it is ok to offend those of us who don't  care to put our food where an animal butt has been or we don't want to purchase food an animal has sniffed.

     There is also the issue of people being allergic to animals like me. I itch and can't breathe good if I get animal hair on me. I have to buy groceries so why should my allergies be triggered because someone wants to take their pet to the store. The service animal again is another issue. There are ways to protect people with allergies from the animal hair.

     My suggestion is that a person must have service animal papers to take an animal into the grocery store. That person must also have a blanket for the animal and the store should provide special animal carts for people with animals to protect those with allergies from the hair. The dogs that are not in carts should be well behaved. That is what makes me mad, service animals are well behaved. they do not act like pets. They do not sniff the food, some behave better than children. Pets should never be allowed in a grocery store. People need to leave them at home.