He's Not Allowed to Sniff?

Several weeks ago, I took a friend to this church-run thrift shop to get some things for her son.  The shop was small, crowded, and slightly musty-smelling.  Isaac loved it.  He found it full of enticing aromas and was unable to resist sniffing a bit.

This was after I lost his prong collar and before I replaced it, so I was having some trouble correcting him and preventing the sniffing.

Oh, and they had a cat.  A fat tabby cat, in the store.  Isaac was very excited to see that.  The cat, less so.

Anyway, at one point I said something to Isaac about knocking off the sniffing because he knows better and the church lady running the shop looked surprised and said, "He's not allowed to sniff?"

I told her that he is allowed to sniff when he's not working, and that he gets plenty of off duty sniffing time, but that he's not supposed to be sniffing things in a store.

She seemed really surprised and maybe slightly disapproving.  I don't know if she thought it was unreasonable to expect a dog not to sniff or didn't know it was possible to train a dog not to sniff or just didn't understand why he shouldn't sniff in a store and had seen other dogs labeled service dogs that sniffed or what.