Today Alice and I went to Michaels with Scarlet. One last practice before our Manners Evaluation next week!
Alice was overall not bad at the store. She walked in through the doors wonderfully. Right inside the doors, we went down an aisle she hadn’t been down before and she did well!
We met several young children in the store, and Alice really wanted to say hi to them—it’s good she likes kids! Luckily she was easy enough to call away and continue on our way through the store if the kid didn’t want to pet her.
We went around the back of the store and found the clearance aisle, which we haven’t seen before. Scarlet wanted to look at the clearance items, so I worked on training Alice to tolerate me shopping. That was a first! Usually we just walk around stores, not stopping in any one place for a long period of time.
She did OK with the shopping, but obviously wanted to get moving.
We did have one issue on the way back to the middle part of the store. There was a narrow aisle filled with holiday decor with things hanging out over into the aisle. Alice refused to go down that aisle. She definitely needs more work on narrow aisles.
So we went down another aisle and found a spot in the middle of the store to work on the obedience exercises. I forgot to do the ignoring a treat on the ground, but we did everything else. And most wonderfully of all, she did come several times!!! Yay!
Again the scented candles were not an issue to walk past, and we even hung around them a little bit because they were on sale and Scarlet wanted to get one. Near the exit we had a harder time. While Scarlet was paying, Alice really wanted to go out the door since we were right next to it. She couldn’t understand that we weren’t going out the door. Then when it was time to go out, she refused LOL! I think she was really confused.
Overall she did OK in the store. She would have passed the ME most likely, but not with flying colors—just an average pass for a young service dog in training.
We got a few pictures, of course nothing near as good as if Brad were with us! They include a pic of me and Alice in the clearance section, one of Scarlet, and one of Scarlet where I tried to get Alice in the picture, too. I got a nice closeup of Alice, and then one of her in front of some giant nutcrackers.
