Building cart smarts with friends


Today Skyler with Korra met us at the grocery store. Korra has never worked while Skyler is pushing a cart, and Alice needed to work on moving out of the way of oncoming carts. So we worked on them together!

Normally I carry Alice inside the grocery store and through the produce section, but today she walked in and past the noisy cart corral all by herself!

We did stop in the produce section to pick up some Pine Berries (white strawberries that are supposed to taste like pineapple!). Then we walked through the produce section and Alice did great! I was very proud of her!

Korra did great with the cart the whole time! Korra seems to be a natural at heeling next to the cart.

We found an empty aisle and first did a little cart work with Korra. I got a video of Korra’s awesomeness!

Then we started to work on Alice getting out of the way of approaching carts. We first did some touches without a cart approaching and Alice was great at them. So next we tried it with the cart approaching and passing us.

At first Alice was worried and didn’t really want to touch but instead wanted to get out in front of the cart and try to keep walking in front of it I guess? So I had Skyler push the cart very very slowly and we worked on touching over and over again as the cart went past.

Alice got the hang of it very quickly! I was so proud of her!

Skyler got a video of my training Alice to do touches to avoid carts coming at us!

Luckily Alice did well with it because suddenly the aisle we were in was FULL of people with carts!!! Alice did such an awesome job with all of them! She was able to get out of the way of them and do touches as they passed without problems. Well except for the time I was reloading with treats and a person went by really fast! Then Alice got a little scared. But so long as I was there to direct her to do touches and reward her, she was good.

We had to stop by the freezer aisle to get some gluten-free bread, and Alice was pretty good at first in the freezer aisle walking up it. I had Skyler open the freezer door and grab bread out, but unfortunately a loaf fell out and scared Alice, so she didn’t want to walk down the freezer aisle anymore. She would walk back the way we came, but she didn’t want to go any further down to the other end. Oh well, something more to work on.

So we turned around and headed back. Originally we were going to go to the produce section to work more there, but on the way there I noticed that Alice was panting. This is a sign of stress, so instead we decided to just check out.

I have never checked out with Alice on the floor and she did fairly well! She did a good job of walking down the checkout aisle and next to the big clunky noisy belt thing. But when we got to the paying section, she backed way up out into the aisle where people were walking by (it was the register on the end). So I had to pick her up to finish paying. But up until then she approached and walked next to the counter well.

Next we headed to get some coffee. We tried Starbucks but it was closed! So we went to Dunkin’ instead. We had a great time talking on the patio while we drank our coffee—even though both of us spilled our coffee some! The dogs didn’t care, though. It was a lot of fun and relaxing to sit and chat. What a great morning!

In the videos, Alice is a tiny sable and white Japanese Chin puppy wearing a purple vest. Korra is a sable Standard Poodle wearing a black vest with holographic patches.

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