Today, we went to the grocery store - all by ourselves! First, we walked over to the college where I am going to teach a course starting in January (just 4 hours a week). I had to pick up keys and some paperwork. All the way over, it was pull, correct, pull, correct. I didn’t put his jacket on until we were there, so as not to “work” him too hard. But the pulling I could have lived without.

It was the first time Rockwell had been to the college and the first time the staff had seen him. He of course charmed everyone with his good looks, if not his good behaviour. But once he calmed down, he lay on the floor and smelled whatever was there so we could talk in relative peace. The problem I discovered was that I had dressed for the walk over and back but not for the standing around in the hall, wearing a turtleneck, a sweater and my coat. I sweat right through the turtle neck so that when we went back outside, I got chilled. I knew this happened but I wasn’t able to remove my coat so I couldn’t really help it. Oh well.

I took his jacket off again while we walked from the college to the grocery store. Once there, I put it back on and then had to figure out a way to hang onto him and push a cart at the same time. I ended up looping his leash through the handlebar on the cart and hanging onto the end of it. It wasn’t tied to the handlebar and I could unloop it easily. But I thought it would make the leash shorter and keep him as close to me as possible without running over his paws. It seemed to work but I mostly pushed the cart with my right hand because the left was too busy with the dog.

I had a list of a few things that I could fit into my backpack but I quickly abandoned the idea of getting anything other than just what I needed today, as it would have kept us in the store longer than I thought we should be. He had peed on the way over so I was pretty sure he wouldn’t do that but the longer we were inside doing “work”, the more likely became the possibility that he might decided to stress-relieve by having a leak. After I picked up the five items I could not live without, we made a beeline for the express checkout where the checker didn’t even notice I had a dog with me until we were finished! I am sure I don’t know who she thought I was talking to the whole time - maybe that’s why she didn’t look at me too closely.

Then we proceeded home, pulling and correcting the whole way. Other than that, he was well behaved, although I must say, I didn’t give him much of an opportunity to misbehave.