Putting on the dog

Dogs sprawl beneath barstools on the Laishley Crab House deck. They help themselves to water bowls placed outside dog-mindful downtown shops. Theycruise Punta Gorda Harborwalk in strollers. They're wheeled about in Lowe’s shopping carts, like small poobahs borne on litters. Venice boasts a renowned dog beach, Brohard Paw Park.  Camp Bow Wow in Port Charlotte requires an interview, tryout, and completion of a daunting three-page Camper Application. It’s like getting your kid into a Beverly Hills nursery school, for Chrissake.

No doubt about it, the Southwest Florida Gulf Coast can claim the most dog-friendly venues in America.

They’ve got nothing on Ophelia’s Pasta House in Nokomis.

Before you even step in the door, there's a lighthearted list of rules for Ophelia’s dog-friendly patio and dining room. 

They offer a tableful of free treats, beds on which shaggy patrons may recline like Roman bacchantes, and walls arrayed with poker-playing, birthday-boy, barfly, and chef dogs, all  rendered in colorful detail by local painter Ingeborg Angeli.  A laminated Canine Cuisine menu features six entrees, as well as kibble for the purist who eschews table scraps. Bring a dog and you’ll be treated like visiting dignitaries. The dogless eat pretty well in their dining area, too.

Even unaccompanied humans may dine on Ophelia’s dog patio. 

Paula and Gary Skorb of Rutland, MA, enjoy breakfast at Ophelia’s Pasta House.

Some say that Ophelia’s lovably loopy co-owner, Nancy Champlin, likes dogs better than people, but that’s not completely true. She doesn’t play favorites. Her former life in western Massachusetts was devoted to human caregiving, as a primary-grades teacher who also trained student teachers.  

Nancy likes to tell stories, including one about a unit on “community helpers.” She asked the class, “How many of you have a relative who’s a community helper?”

One little boy raised his hand and cried, “I do!  My dad.  But he’s dead now.”

“What did he do before he died?”

The boy gurgled dramatically and fell on the floor in response.

Pulling your leg or not, Nancy still loves storytelling. She has her own informal standup routine at the restaurant, moving from table to table telling the more-or-less-clean “joke of the night.”

But the footloose Jim Champlin was always the one who wanted to run restaurants. While studying to teach the deaf, Nancy met Jim in a bar, and her life changed abruptly. He owned Champlin’s, an established seafood market/restaurant on the grey-shingled waterfront of Narragansett, RI. Nancy worked there for six years, breathing in the salt air and loving life--until Jim sold out and started Althea’s in downtown Venice.  Homebody Nancy, who never wanted to budge after settling somewhere, made herself comfy in Venice. Then, five years later, it happened again. They sold Althea’s and moved back to launch The Sunflower, right up the road from Champlin’s.

One day, Nancy asked, “Where’s Jim? We need some lobsters,” only to learn that he’d hopped in his sailboat and taken off for Florida again--this time, to open Ophelia’s Pasta House.

“Well, that’s Jim,” Nancy sighs.  “I love Rhode Island, so I stayed there running The Sunflower, while he was starting Ophelia’s.”

About her grandson’s lemonade stand Nancy wisecracks, “I’ll have to clue him in about this restaurant business!”

But whatever career she pursues, Nancy herself is a “community helper.”

When she heard that Hooves Paws ‘n Claws Animal Sanctuary in Bradenton needed more space, to house hundreds of rescued dogs and cats, along with horses, donkeys, birds, and a pig, she began holding benefits auctioning off donated salon gift cards, golf packages, pet supplies, and groomer and vet certificates. 

Nancy isn’t averse to matchmaking either. She’s tickled to have introduced one middle-aged couple, who fell madly in love at Ophelia’s. “We haven’t even had an argument yet,” the pair giggles, after a month together.