4.5 out of 5, Not Bad

So I woke up today and thought "Hmmm what shall I do on this fine day where I am growing bones in my jaw to make up for the four teeth that were yanked out 3 days ago? I know! How about I take my psychotic 9 month old puppy out shopping on Labour Day Weekend!!!"

And that is exactly what I did. Though it MAY not have been as dramatic as that. It went pretty well, actually, considering. We hit Chapters, Michael's, Staple's, PetsMart, and a mall. We have an assessment coming up next weekend, so this was good practise for Mr. Petesies.

Ironically, Petey was the best at the two most crowded places, Staple's (hello every kid in the world doing last minute shopping!) and the mall. I was pretty happy with him as he worked very well on his halti (or Avenue..whatever), without much pulling and not as much scrounging for nasty things on the ground as before. In Chapter's, though, he kept getting all squirmish and wiggly and not focussing very well. I've noticed that, true to his breed, he is best at work when he can be actually doing something, even if it is just walking around. If i just wanted him to lay there waiting for me to read a book or something, he'd pop up out of his sit or down, looking for something to do or someone to play with. He's definitely had some improvement though, so I'm happy about that. We'll just have to keep on working on that until he improves even more.

The one bad part of our day, though, was being thrown out of Walmart. A Walmart we had been in before. Once we stepped in, the "greeter" greeted us with "No dogs allowed in the store". So we tried to explain, you know the drill....future dogguide, in training, etc. Then we had to wait for the manager's approval, which we ended up not getting. He said that they would only let in dogs that were specifically guiding someone, in other words, legal. Which ,you know, we do understand that we don't have the guaranteed legal access, so we left after talking with the greeter, and the manager. What made it worse was one of the loading guys saying to us "No dogs allowed in this store" and smirking, as he left. That wasn't nice at all. But then there was a woman who overheard all this, and said "You can't deny them! This dog is going to be a guide dog one day!" while glaring at the guy and then nodding at me. Okay, she was wrong, since they can deny us, but still. It was just nice to have someone on "our" side, for once.

But anyways...we just continued on through the mall after that, and then we went home. Not too bad a day, considering the events overall. Plus, I got all my back to school shopping done! Well....except for getting a backpack...but that's on tomorrow's agenda!