Today was our biweekly grocery trip, and I forgot to bring treats with me. Despite that, Hestia did great!
From looking back in my blog, it seems that we can go without treats for about 3 outings at a time, then we need an outing with treats. This seems to remind her that she needs to keep up her behavior for the other three outings.
I think in the future I’ll try to give one treat every outing to keep up the good reminders for her, and because I like giving her treats. But it is good to know that not working much isn’t negatively affecting Hestia’s working behavior too much.
We went to Lidl first, where Hestia was great for almost the entire store. The only time she wasn’t perfect was in the checkout line. As I was bagging groceries, there was spilled food underneath the place where my groceries were, and she found it hard to resist sniffing the food.
I had to go to two grocery stores because Lidl had some linen/cotton blend clothing that Brad and I wanted, but Publix had good prices on berries.
So next Hestia and I went to Publix. Again she was perfect. In fact, she was even better than perfect! When some klutzy person (me) spilled blueberries on the floor, Hestia took a step back and just looked at the berries instead of trying to get to them! I even stayed in that section for a while getting blueberries, strawberries, and bread, and she never once even tried to sniff any of the blueberries on the floor!
In both stores, Hestia stayed in perfect heel the whole time and ignored lots of people cooing to her.
On the way home I stopped by the recycling center to recycle glass since we don’t get curbside glass pickup anymore. Hestia stayed in the car for this, and I was really quick and didn’t get near anyone.
I snapped a picture of Hestia in her galaxy vest in the car at Lidl. I had already taken her out of her seatbelt and put her vest on her– she always wears a seatbelt in the car! I am not taking my phone out of my purse while in the store to reduce the possibility of contamination, so I couldn’t take a picture in the store. So you guys will have to survive on pictures of her in the car or outside. Hestia is a small white and black dog with a smushed nose and googly eyes. Enjoy!
