Dog waitress

Underground cave at Petco Lakeline

Years ago when I was at UT studying film, I had no idea the the waitress job would be my best training. In fact, I am now a dog waitress. I spend a good deal of my time serving nutritious meals to dogs, cats and birds.

We don't have any help, so I'm the busboy, too. Nothing in life is a more profound builder of humility than serving dogs. I've had food, plates, beer, drinks and all kinds of stuff thrown at me by angry drunk customers back in the day. Nothing equals being vomited on by a dog after you've driven all over creation to obtain quality organic free range chicken and beef. You just keep trying and start thinking orthopedic shoes.

Friday, Reunion did a Petco Lakeline event and found out all kinds of interesting things. Petco Lakeline is built on top of miles and miles of underground caves.

Petco also had deer antlers on sale for members. After loading up on Petco paper litter, I splurged and bought each of the in-house rescue dogs a deer antler.

After a couple of obligatory licks, the antlers were totally dissed and lay there by each dog, expensive and ignored.


Being a good dog waitress, I was not going to let them get the better of me. I did what any self-respecting dog waitress would do in a case like this. I went straight to Facebook. After posting on Reunion's rescue page, I got some pretty good advice.

One of the commenters had faced the same problem and tried boiling her deer antlers to coax out smells and make them more attractive to the dogs. That sounded good, so I collected all the antlers, which unsurprisingly, no one seemed to care in the least.

Placing them in a pot on the stove, I took Peanut outside to throw the ball. Naturally, I forgot about the antlers and returned to a house full of smoke and a pot full of burned deer antlers. Once again, I've failed miserably as a dog waitress.

On the upside, though, it's a job you can't seem to get fired from. No benefits and tips are laughable. You can forget about any kind of paycheck and this job really seems to age you.