Santa Baby

Last night our local mall sponsored Pet Night with Santa. I had been looking forward to this for weeks - even since I found out about it. I put it on our calendar - we were going to load up all 4 dogs and take them to the mall to see Santa. This is one of the best Santas in the area. When I got home from work it was pouring down rain. I decided when I parked the car that we weren't going to go. We would have to walk about 20 minutes to get inside the mall and they dogs would all be drenched by the time we could get there. Not pretty. After eating dinner, the rain stopped. So I changed into leaving the house clothes and talked JB into going with me. Can't manage all 4 of them by myself. We easily found parking (I was very surprised since the holiday is so close). Unloaded the dogs and went into the mall. People were stopping us in the road to ask if there was some sort of dog show going on at the mall. At least every other person we past stopped to pet our dogs and ask what breed the "big ones" were. JB thought it was a silly idea to take the dogs to see Santa - but he went anyway. When we got to the Santa line - there were at least 6 dogs in front of us and 2 cats! We didn't have to wait long though - the line moved pretty fast and there were more dogs getting into line behind us all the time. As we were leaving we saw a beautiful grey 9 month old Great Dane. What a pretty dog. Anyway - I was pleasantly surprised by Beauregard. When he's on a leash he thinks he needs to 'protect' me and acts like a real bonehead toward other dogs. He's perfectly fine if he's off leash, but the mall isn't the place for that. He did wonderfully - he politely touched noses with the Pittbull puppy in front of us and the Chihauha behind us. He never growled or even really bothered with the other dogs. What a good boy!! The girls were a handful. They had to keep saying hello to other dogs in the line, ducking under the ropes to see the people and get some pets. When it was our turn, the short dogs sat down in front of Santa, between his legs and he held their leashes. Beau lined up on one side and Lucy on the other. Lucy didn't want to stay there though - as you can tell by the photo at the top - that's the one that I took. We did finally get them all to sit, stay and get our heads out of the picture. This is the final result: I took the picture above. The colors of the dogs are truer in the photo that I took. The bottom picture is a picture of the picture taken at the mall. It turned out great and is already displayed in the frame where it will stay on display all year until being replaced by next year's picture. All in all - I'm pleased :)