Newshound, August 2021
A matter of proportion
A customer had bought two lovely black mini rex rabbits, goodness knows where from as I’ve never seen mini rexes in my life. I was asking her what she was feeding them on while at the same time emphasising the importance of feeding quality hay ad-lib. Ah yes, she said, I’ve been instructed by the vet to feed 80% hay, some hard food and small vegetables. So I only feed them a small carrot, small cauliflower, small cabbage and a small cucumber every day. However – they don’t eat a lot of hay or pellets!! It took some time to convince her the proper diet was 80% hay, then 10% hard feed and 10% vegetables.
Puppy greed
A gentleman well past retirement age wanted some wet and dry puppy food for a litter of five Jack Russell puppies he had bred. We settled on a well-known brand of dry food but I could not convince him on which wet food to buy as he was refusing to pay £1 or more per sachet for wet puppy food. He did not want a very well-known grocery brand of wet food but was unwilling to pay for anything else so in the end he just bought the dry food. A few days later he came back for another bag of dry puppy food and announced that the puppies would soon be going to their new homes so he would not have to buy ‘overpriced’ puppy food any more and, by the way, he was getting £1,800 per puppy where last year he only got £800. It just irritates me that some people who are selling puppies at such high prices are stinting on food, which is so important in a fast growing pup.
Tasty toothbrush
A lady complained that the dog toothbrush her husband bought a few days earlier was substandard as it disintegrated quite quickly in the dog’s mouth. It only lasted 30 minutes, she said, before it disappeared. That would be the toothbrush-shaped dog chew he bought, I replied.
Costly gift
A gentleman came in not long after Father’s Day looking to buy fat balls and wild bird seed as his newly acquired bird feeding table had attracted a lot of wild birds and needed topping up on a daily basis. It turned out his daughter had bought him a bird table for Father’s Day and it’s now costing him to keep it stocked up. Another good regular customer for me.
The price of love
It was our wedding anniversary recently and I was wondering what to get the wife for putting up with me for 44 years. Well, it turns out we are getting a new bathroom suite and it’s grown arms and legs as the wall tiles will need replacing as the new suite will leave gaps, as will the floor need replacing for the same reason. Apparently we also need a new bathroom cabinet to match and the light fitting needs renewing. Then the ceiling and walls will need repainting.
One of our friends, who is also a customer, celebrated their wedding anniversary only two days before ours in the same year and I was wondering what gifts they were buying each other. It turns out they have bought each other a pair of sheep. I wish our garden was a bit bigger as two sheep sounds a lot cheaper than a new bathroom.
How long?!
During the pandemic we have increased our home deliveries quite a lot and almost exclusively we work on payment over the phone and delivery to the door, a type of click-and-deliver but without the click. Or, to put it another way, knock and run!
One consequence of this is we rarely meet the person we are delivering to but one day I delivered to a house and the homeowner was at the door and asked me if I remembered him as he did work experience in the shop 28 years ago. Do I really want to be reminded how long I have run the shop?!
Nice one Charlie
A holidaymaker came in to buy dog food as he had not brought enough with him to last the week and when asked he said the dog was fed on Skinner’s. As it’s not one we normally keep he asked what we did have in stock that was as close to his dog’s food. But he only knew it was called Skinner’s – which one he had no idea. So, what do we recommend? Low protein, high protein, extruded, muesli, working dog, pet dog? How about our own brand Charlie’s Choice, that’ll do nicely!
