A week ago, we had a fairly large outing for us. We started out at Everbowl, which is one of Brad’s favorite restaurants, to have an early celebration of his birthday! Everbowl has bowls filled with bases of fruit-based sorbet/coconut ice creams with fresh fruit, nuts, seeds, and other similar toppings.
We ordered ahead on the app, so only had to be in the store a short period of time to pick up our orders. Brad got a photo of Felix doing a paws up onto my wheelchair seat while waiting. Then we got some pictures of us outside. There’s a picture of each of our bowls, plus pictures of us enjoying them. I am wearing my Tinkerbell dress with a purple witch hat, and Brad is wearing a gold glitter jacket with green accents.
Our food was very tasty, and we really enjoyed it!
Next up, we went to vote! They had voting at York Tech, so that’s where we went, and there was quite the line! Well, it was probably only a 15–20 minute line, so not really all that bad. We got a couple pictures of us waiting to vote with a green “Vote here” sign.
We had a bit of trouble with Felix at the polls. Or at least in the line. There were poll workers organizing the line and they told me Felix had to be in my lap. I told them he didn’t, as he was a service dog. They asked for papers, ID, tags, and a vest! I told them none of that was required. Eventually they let me vote with Felix however I wanted to. We got a couple of videos, and they are below.
Voting went well, and we had zero problems in the actual voting area. All of the voting booths were accessible, which was great! We took a selfie afterwards of us with a giant “I voted” sign.
Finally we headed to Walmart. There’s one Walmart in our area that is a huge Walmart and has a very loud and intimidating bakery/deli/frozen section. So I wanted to work on that with Felix.
We started out in the Halloween aisle, which had stuff all over the floor. Felix did a great job ignoring it!
Then we worked on the paper clip maneuver, which allows you to move like you’re following a paperclip outline to approach and retreat from something scary. We did two rounds of paper clip maneuvers to get close to the deli/bakery area.
Next we went near the deli area and Felix was doing well until an automatic floor cleaner came by!
We decided to move on to easier things for a bit, and on the way to easier things, a woman tried to have a conversation with me. I answered her questions, but kept moving, which it is totally OK to do!
Not too long after that, a kid barked at Felix! So annoying!
Then we were blindsided by the automatic floor cleaning machine! Felix was very scared at first, but then he became curious once it had passed, so we followed it a bit:
The next time we saw the floor cleaner, Felix did much better with it.
We took some time to relax, and then headed back to the deli for more training. Only I got too close to the deli so we had to move further away. Then Felix was OK.
While in produce (next to the deli), two people stopped to talk with us.
Felix got more comfortable near the deli, so we walked around some and he was fairly solid though a little anxious.
Finally, we just hung out near the bakery for a couple of minutes, giving Felix treats for watching me.
After that, we figured that was enough stress for the day, so we left Walmart and came home. We were all very tired from such a busy outing! I won’t have time to go back to that Walmart and train for a while, and I don’t actually ever need to go to that Walmart, so we’ll revisit this training in the future at a leisurely pace since he’s fine elsewhere.