Sunday Brunch with dog at Sun Ray Café

For a while there January seem to be the month of constant light rain. While we walked in the rain a fair bit, the human did not have the gumption to hang around the dog run with the dog in the rain. Just didn’t feel like fun. The Sun Ray Café, which allows dogs is the happy solution to this little problem…

Mainly because the Sun Ray Café is located a lot nearer to us than III Café, the other café that the human liked. Unlike III Café which has a larger empty space for dogs to play in, Sun Ray Café is really more of a sit down food place that allows your dog into it’s air conditioned premises. Not that all the dogs there were leashed. There will always be some patrons who are more comfortable and some patrons who are less comfortable with their dogs off the lead.

Here’s Donna with her lead but not attached to her human. Hah!

 
Hallo my happy dog! Donna is sitting at the outdoor seating that precedes the glass door entrance of Sun Ray Café. You can’t see the whole shop-front because of the young lad who persisted in standing at the glass door right there behind Donna and I had to cut his head off to preserve the anonymity of underage minors frequenting dog cafes. Of course I could always direct him away, but I am shy of doing so and potentially suppressing the natural curiosity of little boys in red T-shirts.

I know from conversations that some people pick and choose the dog café they frequent based on the perception of how friendly the dogs that visit the café are. Hence the apparent popularity of Paw Pet-radise, that tiny and overcrowded shop that the human balked at entering. Of course, that is a very sound method of choosing since who would want to spoil their experience by picking a place where the dogs that visit are spoiling for a catfight.

So of course, the human had to have her priorities wrong, because despite the toy poodle that can barely stand on the next table for trembling so violently (the poor thing) and the shiba inu that starts barking it’s head off when a dog comes too near for its own personal comfort or the border collie that seems to be similarly reactive, the Sun Ray Café is currently the human’s top of the list dog café to visit because well, she liked the food there. Mr P did too, although he thought it fell short of expectations considering the head chef apparently used to serve at 10 Downing Street. Then again, one had to match expectations with the price, perhaps.

The café serves a limited menu for dogs couched in simple 1 word terms that even a dog can understand – salmon, pork, chicken and lamb – if I remember correctly. And Donna really doesn’t have a reason to quibble either since the human shelled out 5 bucks for a plate of cooked minced lamb for her. Come on. It’s meat!

Donna gets along pretty well with shiba inus. She likes them to play with so far, whether it’s at the dog run or at the cafes. But then Mr P argues that Donna play-bows every dog, not just shiba inus.

So anyway, the place is packed with tables and chairs and the amount of room the animals have to move around is basically the narrow aisles between the tables and chairs. But even with the tight space, Donna did manage to have a friendly bout of wrestling along the main aisle with a more friendly shiba inu as well as checking out other more chill dogs that wander around for the fun of it.

Down-stay without the lead, doesn’t mean a dog can’t be curious and look around.

And of the course, the human makes it a point to get her to practise her down-stays in the distracting environment. Kind of hard though, when the plate of lamb we ordered took so long to come.

Sun Ray Café is not perfect. The space is narrow. The service is slow, but if one is planning a slow weekend day with the dog without driving too far, it’s not too bad a choice for slow weekends for us. But if you’re one for staying at home, you can still give the dog a treat with some home-made goodies. Checkout the 1st World Dog Recipe Book for a list of treats suitable for hot days or for training. ;)

This amazingly objective and somewhat descriptive review, blogpost, whatchamacallit is not sponsored or paid for by Sun Ray Café. We just decided to go there on a whim because I wanted to have brunch. Hah!