Rachel

Isabella and Adam in Grand Central Station

On Saturday, I made the brave decision to bring Izzie on the Metro-North and travel down to Grand Central Station for her first trip into the city of New York.

I was nervous to bring her on the train even though I’ve seen other puppy parents do it, plus it was the weekend when there would be noticeably less people traveling. However, Izzie gets territorial and protective over me, and it was no different this time and she barked and whined and many people who approached me on the platform.

She turned into an angel though whenever we got on the train. She immediately shut up and huddled close to my legs and sat on my feet. She was nervous but seemed to take the same approach to traveling on the train as she does when she’s in the car.

We pulled into Grand Central Station and exited the train to the platform. Everything was going quite well but then for some reason Izzie suddenly planted all four paws on the cement and refused to move even with my urging and leash tugging. I resorted to picking the poor girl up and carrying her to the main concourse. She briefly met with a new beagle friend as we walked up the stair cases to the outside.

The day wasn’t without some messes from the nervous dog, but I think she did remarkably well considering she is more of a suburban, almost farm suited, dog. We will be eventually moving to Brooklyn so really it was a matter of time before she would need to be exposed to crowds of people.

We met my fiancé, Adam at the New York Times building and made a pit stop at a local cup cake shop for an early birthday present! Our little family trekked down to the piers next to the Intrepid where we knew there was a small dog park. About a dozen or so dogs were in and out of the compound through the afternoon while we were there, and while we were hoping Izzie would be more social, after we took her leash off she was apparently quite content just sitting next to us in the shade. I felt like a mommy trying to get her reluctant child to go off and play with other children on the first day of kindergarten!

Adam attempted to get her to play in the kiddie pool that the town had set up for the dogs to play in but she would have none of that! She immediately jumped out and went back to chilling out in the shade. I couldn’t blame her, she seemed to be relaxing and enjoying herself. After more coaxing and a little more playing, we decided to start to head back to Westchester, but first stopped at the Shake Shake in Midtown that we had heard so much about! Luckily the lines weren’t took long and we were able to snag a small cup of soft serve ice cream that we shared (Izzie was particularly fond of the treat!) The trip back home was otherwise, luckily, uneventful and again Izzie was a perfect angel on the train.

Mommy and daddy wrapped up the night by having dinner at a local Italian restaurant that was down the street from my place but in the two years I’ve lived in Elmsford, I had no clue it existed! We joked that it was better that we didn’t know about it, otherwise we would have been poor and fat from going to it often. When we got the menus we picked out appetizer and main courses but entertained the server when he asked us if we wanted to hear the specials. We were immediately awestruck at the specials offered and changed everything we had planned on ordering. Adam ordered a delicious duck that was roasted in, of all things, strawberries and strawberry sauce! We started with the crab cake and for my main course I tried the lemony swordfish. The night wrapped up with a huge slide of tiramisu that we couldn’t finish.

All in all a great way to ring in my birthday!