I had a few errands to take care of and Andiamo had not been to Home Depot in a while. I also needed a few things from Petco, which is another of Andi's favorite places to go. We had fun in Petco and saw a friend, Liz and her husband. Liz and her Anatolian Shepherd, "Dooley", are in our Saturday classes with Dorothy. Dooley is the same age as Andi. He is a lot bigger though. Andi looks pretty big to me until we get to the class with Dooley. Dooley will probably be around 140 lbs. when he is full grown. Andi is about 94 now and seems to be sticking at that weight.
Andi played games (through the glass) with the ferrets. One of them had a white face and ears, which stood up like Andi's. It seemed to be more interested in Andi then the other ones were. Andi also enjoyed the Parakeets.
When we entered Home Depot, a couple of employees greeted him. Almost everyone in there knows him and they have watched him grow from a little puppy. He knows the ones who carry treats and he leans against them and shakes paws with them. This visit turned out to be pretty exciting. It was a rainy afternoon and not very busy. So the employees had been decorating for Halloween. They sure have some amazing creatures. Many of them have motion sensing and they make sounds and move around. Those are the ones that Andi found to be the most scary.
He really was interested in all of them. There was one big tall one that spoke to him. It was really creepy. Another one seemed creepy too, but it did not bother him. It was interesting trying to figure out why some of them were scary to him and others not so much.
Andi thought this one was very scary:
It was very tall and raised its arms way above it's pumpkin-head. Andi barked at it several times and some of the employees were enjoying watching him.. Through it all though, he did not back up. He held his ground between me and whatever horrible creature we encountered. What a great pup he is!
This skeleton, dressed in black with chains that rattled when he moved, seemed scary to me, but it did not bother Andi as much as the previous one. He even agreed to pose for a picture by this one.
The smaller ones below, to our left, talked a lot and they bothered Andi a little more. I think maybe because they were closer to his eye level. He watched a woman in the aisle ahead of us, walking along shaking hands with them. That made them roll their eyes and make strange sounds.
In the picture below Andi is stalking them, using our cart as kind of a shield. I believe the woman had him more worried than the creatures. She was dressed in dark clothing and because she was human, her movements were even more frightening, as she seemed to be with them.
We saw most of the creatures in the halloween section of the store. I realized what a truly brave boy I have. Seventeen months old and he will put himself between me and Zombies! What a wonderful dog.
We left the halloween department and went on to find the things I needed. After our spooky experience, when Andi saw a few obstacles that he did not recognize, he thought maybe they were monsters. But there was noting that really frightened him. Andi is so good at walking beside the cart now. He has learned "turn" and we are working on left or right. He is a pleasure to shop with now. I find it so interesting to watch his reaction to different people. He sometimes immediately play-bows to some people, wanting to play. Other times he just casually sniffs in their direction. He enjoys meeting people who have dogs at home. He can always tell who they are. He is pretty out-going, probably because he has been going to Home Depot since he was little. Occasionally though, he will see someone he is just not interested in meeting. I always study them and try to understand what causes his unfavorable opinion. They can be male or female, but they are just someone he does not choose to greet.
On our way out of the store, we had to pass through the halloween section again. One of the employees stopped to talk to us. We were right next to the small zombie type creatures that the woman had been shaking hands with when we came through before. As I was talking with the employee, it gave Andi a chance to really look over the creatures that were face level for him. He had apparently paid attention when he watched the woman shake hands with them. He would put his nose in each hand, whether it was skeleton or something else. He poked slightly to stimulate the motion that it would then make. Sometimes he stepped back slightly, to watch the response, but he did not appear to be very frightened. The one that bothered him the most was one with big red eyeballs that rolled in rather fast circles. He gave it two steps back. He was gradually finding that they were not too scary after all. The last one he was testing, he poked its hand, then went on to nibble at it a little. I decided he was getting a little too familiar with them and we went out to our car.
Andi almost immediately went to sleep in the passenger seat. What a guy! We went home and he could hardly wait to get to the house and greet his brothers. I usually open the garage after the gate is shut behind us. Andi likes to race from the gate to the garage as Pirate is coming out to greet us. You would think they had not seen each other for a year, rather than a few hours. I hurry inside to bring Journey out of his gazebo and we walk around the yard a little. We all love the fall, even the rain is usually pleasant here. Our weather is normally pretty mild. We more often get mist, rather than heavy rain. It is what keeps Washington green. I moved here when I retired, about ten years ago. I have never regretted it. I love country living, small towns, lots of rivers, lakes, mountains, trees and the Pacific coast. It is dog friendly here and I love the green!
