Another successful visit to Ren's

Gozer wanted to walk to Ren's this afternoon. At the point where we can either take the path that eventually leads to Ren's or the path the skirts the Blue Springs Pond basin (which is a former quarry), she wanted to take the path to Ren's. I, on the other hand, wanted to take the other path because it leads to home more quickly. A walk to and from Ren's is at least 90mins, plus the time in the store.

Gozer tends to pull on her leash when she wants to go somewhere. I used to try to drag her in the direction I want to go, which resulted in her digging in her heels and pulling even harder. These days, I stop, face the direction I want to go, plant my feet, and hold the leash around my bellybutton with my arms close to my body while saying "no". I give the leash some very gentle tugs to indicate that we can move on but we don't start walking anywhere until she lets the leash go slack and gives up. Yes, it can take some time but eventually she will give up.

What often ends up happening is that she'll walk a couple of feet and then veer off in the direction she wants to go. I then stop again, repeating the same maneuvers as above, and wait until she's ready to go. If it ends up that she takes a while to go where I want her to, and that we have to make multiple stops to wait for her to give in, so be it. I'm finding that the longer we do this, the shorter the time until Gozer gives up.

Anyways, so we didn't walk to Ren's this afternoon but I did tell her that we could go after we got home and we ended up driving there after dinner. She had a lovely time sniffing around and getting treats from the cashiers. She really liked those treats because she ended up getting four of them.

There were two other dogs in the store: both were boxers, and one was pulling at its leash to see her. The first time we saw them, she turned away and so we ignored them. Later on she wanted more treats from the cashier, who was talking to the boxers' owner, and she went closer to the boxers although didn't get close enough for sniffs to be exchanged. The one boxer was lunging and making noise and Gozer was cringing away from it so I took her away. She relaxed quite quickly and continued sniffing around.

We left because I got bored, not because she was upset, although we were only there for 20mins or so. I ended up buying her a new squeaky that had a good loud sound but was different than her other loud squeakies. She carried it to the cashier and out the door so I think she liked it.