Today I went to the pet store with Alice for the first time! We went at 9AM to Pet Supermarket. I have never been inside that pet store before, though I get pickup from them all the time.
We started outside the store, and spent a while getting Alice to walk through the doors to enter. She was leery of the door that kept magically opening and closing!
Once we got inside, an employee greeted Alice which made her feel better. Then we started on a loop of the store. It wasn’t a big pet store, but we went at Alice’s pace which meant it took a long time!
She was worried a little about the freezer section and the condensers making noise, but quickly got over that. At first she stopped a lot and had to be coaxed into walking forward. But after about 5–10 minutes, she started walking a lot longer distances between observation times and seeming more comfortable.
When we got to the back of the store, we encountered the small animal and fish section of the store. Alice was worried about the bird noises for a while, so we just hung out and listened to them. Eventually she was comfortable enough to approach the cages and tanks.
First she walked past the frogs. There were other reptiles there, too, but they were too high for her to see. She didn’t notice these guys at all!
Next we passed the hamsters, which frightened her a little with their quick movements! But after watching them from afar for a little bit, she got comfortable with them.
Then we visited the fish, which were all too high for Alice to see from the ground. So I picked her up—this was the only time I picked her up in the store. The rest of the time she was four on the floor. There was a step stool in front of the glow in the dark fish, so I set her on there to see the fish and I got some pictures, too. She didn’t care about the fish, but was a little worried about being on the step stool.
Then I showed her the birds, who were really high up. We got a selfie with them!
We made a full loop around the store and she was really starting to feel comfortable, so I decided to go up the dog treat aisle and back down the cat aisle. She walked like a champ up and down these aisles!
It had been 30 min by that time, so we headed out. Alice had just a little hesitation walking through the door, but made it pretty well.
I was very proud of her, she did a great job!
Pictures show a tiny sable and white Chin puppy in front of frogs, hamsters, fish, and one with me wearing a turquoise mask with white daisies in front of parakeets.