Felix does great and switching out dogs


Today was a busy day! Every two weeks, we have a coffee and pastries time with our local NAMI chapter (I stay masked). Since our NAMI building is pet friendly, I was encouraged to bring Felix so everyone could meet him. I was unsure how he would do, so my plan was to try it out and if he didn’t do well, we’d just leave early. My maximum amount of time I would stay was one hour.

I showed up at 11:15 and everyone was really excited to meet Felix! He had a great time saying hi to everyone, and was extremely well behaved. Even though this morning he was a wild one, he was perfectly calm and happy to just hang out in my lap during the event. He even stayed calm when my friend Sabrina and her service dog Indy arrived! I was really excited about that!

We had lots of good conversation– much of it about service dogs since there were several people there who have, have had, are training, or otherwise know a lot about service dogs.

I meant to get some pictures of us there, but time got away from me and I forgot! When our hour was up, Felix was just starting to get a little antsy, so we headed out.

I had to pick up some more dog food for him since he didn’t like the other dog food I got him, but does like another kind that I had a little bit left of. Sabrina, Indy, and Sabrina’s daughter Faith came with us as we headed to Pet Supplies Plus.

Felix did really really well in Pet Supplies Plus! He was taking treats really well and about 80% of the time that I called his name, he’d look at me! Yay!!! I managed him a lot around corners (where there tends to be a lot of pee smells) so that he wouldn’t even think about marking. At one point in the store he was walking past a corner and just barely started to lift his leg, but I was able to distract him right away so if you weren’t looking for him to do it, you wouldn’t even have noticed that he even thought about peeing in the store!

We walked up and down several aisles and followed Sabrina and Indy as they shopped in the store. It was hard for Felix not to say hi to Indy all the time, but Indy did a good job of ignoring him which helped a lot. I had Faith get a few pics of me doing watches with Felix and rewarding him for looking at me. Overall I’m very pleased with how he did in the store! He did pull quite a bit, but that was because he wanted to go be with Indy. But at least he focused on me pretty well and didn’t even get to start fully thinking about marking anywhere.

We wanted to go out to lunch afterwards, but I didn’t want to push Felix too much. I wanted to end on a success. So while Sabrina, Indy, and Faith went to Wild Birds Unlimited, I drove Felix home (5 min) and switched him out for Hestia!

We had planned to eat lunch at Red Bowl, but when we got there they said that they weren’t seating people on the patio today. So they lost our business! We went to McAllister’s instead.

Hestia was so excited to see Indy! We placed our order, and went to sit on their very lovely patio. This McAllister’s has a much nicer patio than the one we usually go to. We had a great time talking and eating and catching up. Hestia was really happy to be out with me!

After we finished eating, Faith got a picture of Sabrina with Indy and Hestia with me. Then we headed home while Sabrina, Indy, and Faith went on to go to Ollie’s.

When I got home, we took the pups out in the yard where they ran and played together. I got a short 1 min video of all three dogs running and playing together!

Below are the pictures and video I described above. In them, I have medium-length brown hair and am wearing a white dress with blue botanicals on it. Felix is a small sable and white Japanese Chin, Hestia is a black and white Japanese Chin, and Alice is the tiniest sable and white Japanese Chin. Sabrina is wearing a denim jacket and a fun grey fedora and is using her manual wheelchair. Indy is a cream colored Golden Retriever.

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