Today we met a friend for lunch at Panera, and I tried taking both dogs. It wasn’t an unmitigated disaster, but it also didn’t really work out that well!
I had planned to hold Alice and work Hestia while we placed our order. We were planning to sit outside, so I wouldn’t be working both dogs for very long.
Well when Hestia saw our friend, she got super excited even though I haven’t been letting her say hi to that friend much. It turns out that letting her say hi at all to people is really detrimental to her behavior when she’s on duty, so in the future I’m stopping that.
But I had to do something today, so since Hestia was too excited I decided to hold her and work Alice on the floor. Alice entered the restaurant wonderfully and stood in line well! But again she wouldn’t approach the counter. We are planning to find some counters with no one staffing them sometime soon to work on approaching them!
So in order not to hold people up, I picked Alice up and gave her to Brad to hold while I ordered and got my drink.
We got seated outside, with Hestia on a mat next to my chair. Unfortunately Hestia isn’t used to sitting on the floor while I eat, so I had to move her a few times back to on the mat. Alice did OK on my lap, but really wanted to stand while I was eating my sandwich. It was a super messy sandwich that I needed to hold the paper wrapping right underneath to catch drips, so I was unable to put it down and reposition Alice.
She does really great lying down while I’m eating at home, but we need to practice it more when out and about for sure!
So it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t great, either. I think for a while I’m going to stick with bringing just one dog. It was super stressful to try to manage two!
Brad got a picture of me holding Hestia with Alice on the floor in Panera in front of a Christmassy table. I am wearing pink dog and flower leggings, and the pups are Japanese Chin wearing purple harnesses.
