My boyfriend and I are very picky when it comes to our three dogs. We'd been to Pet Planet a few times just to browse and pick out a few new treats here and there. Once, they had a pet adoption event going on and the people running it allowed me to take a sweet puppy out of her crate and carry her around the store and love on her while we shopped. It made my day.
Anyway, this most recent time I was desperately searching for some allergy relief for my 5 pound Chihuahua. She's always had terrible environmental allergies year-round, but they'd gotten worse over the previous month or so. I've tried every allergy med in the book, from homeopathic to Benadryl to prescription, and nothing had worked for her. She was having sneezing fits, horribly runny eyes and nose, what they call backwards sneezing fits where she chokes on her own mucus, and you could hear when she slept that she was very congested and having trouble breathing.
We went to four different natural pet stores this day looking for allergy supplements for her. Unsurprisingly, the other stores had either no allergy supplements, or things I had already tried for her. Pet Planet was our last stop for the day, and I walked in expecting the same answer I'd gotten from the previous three stores. When we walked in the door, we were immediately greeted by the saleswoman, and when we asked about allergy supplements, she quickly went to show us a line of supplements called NaturVet, which she said she sells quite often and has never heard negative feedback about.
Unfortunately, they did not have the Aller911 product that she was looking for. She explained that she typically works at their Tatum location, and was certain that they had this in stock. She said that she would call the other store and have them pull the product for us. Because it was a half hour until closing, we said that we didn't want to be "those people", but she insisted, saying "you have my permission to be those people".
We ventured across town to their other location, and were greeted by the man behind the counter and someone he was training. He asked if we were looking for the allergy supplements, and pulled out two different types (powder and chewables) and discussed the pros and cons as well as the serving size for each. Since my Chihuahua is picky, we decided to go with the powder, and the salesman took us across the store and showed us different methods of feeding it to her. We eventually settled on wet food, and he browsed the different brands and proteins with us.
All in all, both of these people were very well educated about the products in their stores, and had no problems answering any of our millions of questions or offering suggestions. Not only was the experience in both stores great, but my little dog is the healthiest I've seen her in a long time. All of her symptoms are either much improved or completely gone. This experience left us both very impressed, and we plan to make Pet Planet a go-to stop for our doggies from now on.