Best of Boston

Puffy’s not the best shopping companion: drooling on merchandise, constantly demanding attention, invading strangers’ personal space. Any place that overlooks —welcomes, even—such unseemly habits scores big with us. This year Polka Dog expanded to accommodate its lines of animal gear with voluminous bins of squeaky cupcakes and rubber telephones, walls of collars, piles of beds, and accessories for literal clothes hounds. As if all that weren’t enough, there’s the popular buffet of inventive edibles, for when your guests’ shoes are no longer an option: liver chips, salmon coins, and catnip “pawbreakers” for delicate breeds; cow thigh bones for those with heartier appetites.