Today for the first time in about two months, Alice and I went out to train together! We have had to put training on hold since before the convention because of all my doctor appointments and because Alice wasn’t feeling well.
Now she’s feeling better and I only have two doctor appointments left, so we’re back at it! We went to Michael’s, a pet friendly store that’s pretty easy. I wanted to make her first time on the floor in a store for two months as light as possible.
She had zero problem going in through the automatic doors. When we walked in, we could choose to go through a wider gap or a narrower gap to get to the main aisle. I tried going through the narrower gap first, but Alice wasn’t too sure about it. So no biggie, we went in the wider gap. In the past we’ve had to work a bit on narrow spaces, it looks like we’ll have to go back to working on that. Here is a video of her walking in the store. She is stopping at the end because she’s expecting that I’ll give her a treat every time she looks at me like usual, and I’ve not been delivering that while filming!
She was great walking down the main aisle of the store! She was looking at me a lot for yummy chicken! We went up and down a few aisles—including an aisle with plastic dinosaurs at her eye level! I got a couple of pictures of her with the dinos!
She did stop more often than she was doing before we took our hiatus, so we’ll have to work on forward momentum again. She also didn’t want to walk while other people were walking past us. She did walk past one lady who was stopped looking at frames, which was good! But if people wanted to pass us, she just stopped and watched them.
We did one loop around the store and she was still doing well and engaged, so I started a second loop. But I think she got full or tired of the chicken and suddenly about 1/3 of the way around the store she just stopped and didn’t want to move forward. So I figured she was done for the day. We turned around and headed out of the store.
I got a video of her leaving through the automatic doors because I wanted you to see how well she did with them! Yes, she is pulling a little bit, but hey I’d rather her be comfortable enough with automatic doors that she pulls a little than not want to go through them!
We got one final picture of us outside of the store after Alice got a chance to potty. It’s a selfie of us with the Michael’s sign in the background. In all the pictures I have short brown curly hair and Alice is a small sable and white Japanese Chin wearing a purple harness.
