Winery Uses Dog to Deliver Booze During Coronavirus Pandemic

A Hagerstown, Maryland, winery is getting creative with social distancing solutions for its business by introducing a delivery dog to its staff.

The dog, named Soda Pup, is a 75-pound brindle boxer armed with horse saddle bags and a vest with two pouches who delivers wine for Stone House Urban Winery in Hagerstown, Fox 5 DC reported.

But Soda Pup does not do his deliveries alone. He is accompanied by a winery employee put on “dog patrol” to ensure customers do not feed Soda Pup anything other than ice cubes.

“We’ve had people call in just specifically to have Soda Pup bring wine out to them,” Lori Yata, Soda Pup’s owner and co-owner of the winery, tells WJLA.

But Yata was not sure the delivery concept would work at first.

“I thought, ‘God, please don’t let a goose or something walk by or those wine bottles are gone,’” she told the Herald-Mail.

The 11-year-old dog can only carry two bottles of wine at the same time, so winos will have to wait for their guilty pleasure to arrive.

“We are going to look for the positive side of this, closing the store allows us to do things we normally cannot keep up with, we are making tons of wine,” Yata says.