The brief glimpse of snow is long gone, but the weather has been cold, gray, and often wet. Dotty is hoping to spend more time at the mall.

We’ve visited lots of places that regular dogs are not allowed to go. Besides the mall, Dotty has been to numerous local cafes and bakeries, the airport, some shops and banks, and a grocery store.

It turns out that wheeled carts make her very nervous. She’s not crazy about automatic doors, either, or those weird freezers in the supermarket. But the carts really get to her.

The solution turns out to be hanging out at the mall. Every teenager’s dream. (Well, it was when I was a teenager …)

The point is literally to hang out and watch the world go by. People. Wheelchairs. Children running and jumping and screaming. Those all-terrain, 2-kid strollers that are bigger than some cars. Normal strollers too. Kids riding 3-foot-tall motorized stuffed animals.

And the smells — from the two pretzel shops to the Cinnabon to the stinky bath products stores… the smells are overwhelming to me, and I know that Dotty’s nose is thousands of times more sensitive.

Dotty just watches. Sometimes, something surprises her and she gets up to take a closer look. But we hang out out of the stream of shoppers and mall walkers, just watching.

We also wandered a bit, past the video game arcade and the photo booth and the electronic “rides” for small children. Past the larger-than-life wooden forest ranger (she was not too keen on him) and the massage chairs. She checked out the shoeshine station pretty thoroughly.

This kind of watching and wandering can, of course, be done outdoors as well. But, as the weather turns wintry, sitting in parks has lost its appeal. (We did a fair bit of that over the summer, but clearly not enough.)

The idea is to get her used to everything, and anything. So that she won’t be surprised by people, carts, or whatever else pops up when she’s out and about. It’s a kind of “desensitization” training that, I hope, will build up her confidence in preparation for when she, as service dogs do, goes into new places and experiences unexpected things.