day 3 : Cafe Paws & SMTown@COEX

day 3 : 1st May 15


~Caffe Paws~


Seoul offers many cafes. Korean women are seen hanging out at these cafes chatting animatedly with their girl friends. While, younger Korean couples dressed up to the nines snuggled up at a corner on a romantic date. Cafes comes in all shape and sizes in Seoul. Choose the larger chains like Angel-In-Us-Coffee or A Twosome Place. Or simply step into a fancy European style cafe. Then, there comes the themed cafes that brings a different definition to your normal sit down with a coffee cup. 

Cat Cafe, Dog Cafe, Sheep Cafe, Dress Up Cafe, Poop Cafe among other distinctively themed cafes. I love dogs and I am so excited that today, we'll be visiting a dog cafe! 

What I am looking for is one that has lesser crowds so I can spend more quality time with the furry friends. That's when I stumbled upon Caffe Paws. It's not a typo but the cafe is spelt with double Fs. Reviews of the cafe are gleaming and fits just what I am looking for. Let's go!

Direction
I got the direction from this blog (Thank U!). Take the subway Line 2 to Gangnam Station. Take Exit 4. Walk until the big intersection where you'll be standing next to a crab restaurant. You'll see a giant crab sign on the building (Provided the crab restaurant is still in business). At this intersection, you'll be turning left. To do this, choose to cross the street and turn left. Walk along the road until you'll see Caffe Paws on your right. The cafe is at the corner of a small intersection. It's a bit of a walk but just be patient :)


The Entry
We were greeted with a bunch of excited doggies. They congregated the entrance and I just had to slowly push myself in. My shoes felt heavy and there was a lil cocker spaniel helping me to untie my shoe lace. When she's done with one shoe, she went to another shoe. I find that amusing until she started to get all psycho over my shoe lace and then got she scolded by the care-taker. 



The Cafe
The cafe is spacious, bright and airy. Liven up by dogs and puppies running around. Most importantly, the place is really clean and doesn't have any smelly doggy wee-wee. The cafe operators were seen running around as well cleaning up quickly any mess that the doggy left on. 

In this cafe, all you need to do is to get a drink and you can play with the dogs as long as you like. Since these dogs are high maintenance and there's no entrance fee, the drinks are slightly more costly ranging about KRW 6,000 to KRW 9,000. However, the happiness that comes with it is more than money can buy :)


The Dogs
The doggies are well-groomed and doesn't have any odor. They have a good mix of pure breeds for your entertainment and uber friendly to humans. The cafe also allows owners to bring their own dog for boarding, grooming or simply to mingle with the other dogs. It's a happy playground for them. 

We chose the corner seat and all the dogs started to fight for our attention. Some asked to be carried, some leap onto our lap marking the ownership "This human is mine!"

Let's see if I can name these breeds correctly. 

The shoe lace obsessed cocker spaniel

The clingy Poodle

Bischon Frisse

Mr Popularity Pomeranian

I- Just-Shit-My-Skirt Terrier

I-Just-Shit-My-Pampers Silky Terrier

I-Did-NOT-Shit-My-Pants Silky

Snow White Malteses

Smiley Corgi

Paranoid Shih-Tzu

The jailed Schanuzer

Peeping Tom twins - English Sheepdog

The Baby Pomeranian

I-Am-Bane, I dunno what breed is this

Sleepy socks, I dunno what breed is this

Unknown breeds

Get me outta-here!

They say the dog choose you in the cafe and this marbled eyed Maltese just wouldn't want to leave my lap throughout my whole time in the cafe. I put her down so others who were eyeing her can play with her. She refuses to let them carry her and just kept snuggling back up to me. Aww.....

How can you say to no these eyes! She's so super cute and one thing I regret didn't do is to take her home with me :p

Here comes the Malamut. At first, I thought it was  a big boned Husky until I was told it's a Malamut.

That explains it! 

It is still a juvenile but comparatively, the biggest one in the cafe. Which made it the top hit among visitors. It wouldn't linger near anyone and prefer to hop around. Yeah, when it runs, it hops which made it funnier with its tremendous size. It likes to play with the smaller dogs and jumps around them. Luckily no one got stomped :p

\

It came up to me and started smelling my dress. Aha, it knew the Burger King I had prior to the cafe. I touched it's dense mane, wow, I couldn't even reach it's skin. Then it started to wiggle leaving a poof of hair all over me as it left off to play.

 You can be a super star too with doggie treats in your hands

Meanwhile, smelly poo-poo maltese (the one standing) were making pitiful noises for me to carry him. He's the only one that smelled like poo. I took him up to check but there's no poo on him. Did he ate some poo?

An over-excited white dog jumped onto our table. I had my hands full trying to protect my expensive drinks since our table is basically taken over by dogs. 

Time passed so fast while in the cafe :( We ended up in the cafe for 3 hours. OMG!
Had to go to the washroom. There's a divider to prevent dogs from getting in. I kept hearing this bell while walking to the washroom, man, the dog frenzy has gotten into my head. As I turned to close the washroom door, standing there was a puppy that followed me all the way to the washroom. LOL!

We really need to go off and look at what Ms Marble eyes did! While I was gone, she scrambled onto my bag either protecting it or wanted me to take her home. I went around for a final good-bye to all the furry friends. Ms Marble eyes were already "captured" by another visitor. With a heavy heart, I waved goodbye to her and she stared back with the sad-sad marble eyes.

How could you leave such a place?! :*(

Side Thoughts: After leaving the cafe, I felt for the dogs. Dogs need a sense of belonging and I can imagine their heart being broken each time they open them up to a visitor and the visitor leaving them when they're done playing with them. Vice-versa, the human like me are also heart broken after leaving those that really bonded to me. On a positive note, these dogs are well cared for and get human attention everyday. Overall, they look happy chasing each other around. There are many other unfortunate doggies out there and I just hope we as human fulfill our responsibilities for these animals.