The Wine Shop – update

Our most recent visit to Fortinos to do some routine shopping was expected to be predictable (when will we learn?).

I was the one doing the shopping again and, as I came down the escalator, I saw Carol and Ray waiting for me at the bottom. We got ourselves organized for the walk home and headed for the exterior doors which were directly across from the wine shop.

As we were about to turn left and go through the doors, Ray decided to turn right and pulled us into the entrance to the wine shop where he promptly sat! There was an obvious and immediate problem. The “Bark & Fitz” man* was not there.

Ray, in true Ray tradition, just seemed to accept it all as part of a typical day and took it all “in his stride”. He just focused on the poor unsuspecting lady who was working there.

From my perspective, it was an interesting situation because the lady did not see him arrive. I had a pretty good idea as to how this was going to “play out” because in Ray’s past, while he was very wary of people in general, he was more accepting of women than he was of men. Now, in his much more secure and self assured state, he was going to like her as long she did not startle him somehow.

As I was watching to see what would happen, she looked up and saw Ray looking very cute and cuddly and obviously making eye contact with her. She looked a little taken aback initially, presumably from her unexpected visitor, but then came to terms with the moment and gave him a smile and a questioning “Hello?” (The magical “Hello” **)

She then came around the counter to meet him and, of course, he immediately closed in and touched her (“Where’s my treat?”) after which she seemed to get so much pleasure out of stroking him. While this was going on, we decided to help her out and explained the situation with the Bark & Fitz man. Unfortunately, she had no treats there for him so we had to offer him a consolation prize to enable us to walk home, but she was so nice to him that I have no doubt that the wine shop is going to be a regular destination now.

As an afterthought, unless we change our shopping habits, we can’t even detour around the wine shop!

*See Post “Ray at the Wine Shop”

https://meandray.com/2016/01/28/ray-at-the-wine-shop/

**See Post “Intuitive Dog Training?”

https://meandray.com/2016/01/08/intuitive-dog-training/

13 thoughts on “The Wine Shop – update”

  3. Methinks that although your walks may get shorter to ‘avoid’ certain areas, they’ll take longer as Ray stops to say hello to all his new friends! It’s a question now of who’s taking who, and has nothing to do with pulling on a lead! Big pat by proxy for Ray please. 🙂

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    • When Ray first moved in, I would dictate the walk route. Once he seemed comfortable with our area, we compromised the walk route as I periodically gave him choices. Later I gave him (occasionally) full choice. We have now progressed from that point!!!!!! 🙂

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      • Ha! Maggie always turned right out of the front gate in the bungalow, so we turned left one day o see what she’d do. It took a while, but she followed us, then we turned round and walked the other way. We kept doing this for a while before continuing on our walk. Every time she assumed we were going in one particular direction, we’d go in the opposite. Eventually she got the idea and waited at the gate until we decided which way to go. By the way, our walks were nearly all off lead then.

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        • We used the same technique to get Ray to walk properly on his leash. Every time he started to pull, we simply changed direction. Eventually, he gave up trying to guess where we were going and simply stayed along side! 🙂

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