Maple, the siren

Maple is in heat. I have a two-acre fenced yard. The neighbors down the road have a male yellow lab named Winchester. They do not have a fenced yard. Winchester has been coming down to run around the outside of our fence looking for a way in.

Aargh!  What is it about living in the country that causes people to lose all common sense when it comes to building a fence if they have a dog?  Even if they don't care about their dog making little Winchesters, do they think dogs don't get hit by cars in the country?  

It's windy, temp is the 20s.  Before I let Maple go outside after dinner, she has to have her lighted collar on, so I (the person with the fenced yard) can follow her around in my pajamas and robe to make sure that there is no four-footed labbie Romeo lurking.

How Dog Owners Rate Hotels

Speaking of traveling with dogs…

Neither my bank balance nor my driving skills make an RV an option for me.  I must find a hotel for the overnight dog shows.  Many of my dog show friends simply reserve the hotel with the cheapest room rate.  “I’m only there to sleep for a few hours,” they tell me, “All I need is a bed.”  How I envy such adaptability.

I confess, I like my dog show experience to include a pleasant place to retreat in the evening.  Most of my annual leave these days is expended on dog shows. They have become my de facto vacations.  I’m not sure whether to consider that pathetic or an admirable sign of dedication.

There are some normal hotel amenities I always look for.  I must have internet access.  I mean, what if I got a Q and couldn’t tell everyone on my email lists that night?  I need a refrigerator for the special dog show treats. Oh, and my dinner, too.  I need a microwave, because I can’t leave the dogs in the hotel and eat out.  Counter space is nice for preparing dog dinners.  Generally, however, when traveling with a dog, the usual hotel rating guides are worthless.  If I were rating hotels, at least three of the five stars would be based on:

·        The size and quality of the pet potty area

·        The ease of getting to and from the pet potty area at 2 am.  Nothing can get a dog-owning traveler out of bed and outside in a strange city wearing slippers and coat over pajamas like a dog with a case of dog show diarrhea.

·        The suitability of the neighborhood around the hotel for walking a dog long enough for said dog’s bowels to be stimulated to want to use the potty area before settling in for the night.

Yes, that’s right: I evaluate hotels based primarily on my dogs’ needs for bathroom facilities.

The ideal hotel has a large, fenced grassy patch for a potty area and patrons who are conscientious about picking up after their dogs.  Access to the potty area in this dream hotel is straight through a sliding patio door.  The hotel is in a residential area near a park along a river where the water-crazy golden retriever can take a quick swim.  I’ve yet to stay in a hotel that had all three of these features, but I have stayed in a couple that had two out of three. 

I’ve also stayed in hotels that where the dog potty accommodations were dismal. The potty area at one of the hotels was a closet-sized patch of gravel in the corner of the parking lot.  To get to this charming doggy-loo, I had to bring the dogs down a long hallway and through a heavy door that was hard to open when the key card would work, which it often didn’t.  I went out on the first night to find that a dog handler with a giant RV had parked next to the potty area and covered half the gravel with an X-pen.  Thanks, buddy!  The icing on the cake was that the hotel was in an area of town with no grass anywhere within a 15-minute walk.  Maybe further, I don’t know, because it wasn’t a part of town where I wanted to spend a whole lot of time walking around at night.

I realized a couple of years ago that Google Map is a great resource for choosing a hotel with an easy route to the show site.  I only realized towards the end of last year that Google Earth is a fabulous tool for checking out the neighborhood around a hotel.  Concrete jungle or near a residential area?  Any nearby open areas that might be suitable for pleasant walks?  Ah, technology. Thou hast helped my dog have a happier bowel movement.

Did I Forget the Dumbbell????

The first obedience trial of the year for us is 10 weeks away.  Which means it’s time to start packing for the trip.  As a dog show approaches, some people get more and more stressed about how their dog will do in the ring.  I have sleepless nights worrying that I don’t have enough time to pack. 

 Long before dog show mania came into my life, I used to travel fairly regularly to scientific meetings. In those days, my philosophy was simple: a few changes of clothes, a handful of toiletries, and above all: Don’t forget the wallet or the slide carousel.  (Remember slides?   Remember how at least one slide inexplicably turned itself upside down for every presentation?)  If I had my wallet, I could buy anything I had forgotten, except for my precious slide carousel.  (You’re thinking, what if she forgot her dress clothes to give the presentation?  You can’t pick up a formal outfit at a hotel gift shop.  Ah, these were scientific meetings, where “formal” was defined as a shirt with buttons. And, if your T-shirt didn’t have an advertisement for your favorite beer, well, that was close enough to formal.  Honest to God, at one meeting, the Director of our department, who was giving the keynote address, didn’t realize he was wearing mismatched shoes until he got to the meeting.  If he hadn’t said anything, I don’t think anyone would have noticed he had one black shoe and one brown shoe.)

But, back to dog shows.  The unhappy reality of travel with dogs is that remembering your wallet won’t rescue you from whatever else you forgot.  The hotel gift shop might have emergency underwear, but not many of them sell that dumbbell sized just-so to fit your dog’s mouth.  You certainly can’t forget the EXTRA SPECIAL DOG TRIAL TREATS.  But really, it’s the sheer volume of stuff that makes dog show packing so daunting.  The big modern world is not made for dogs. You have to bring their world with them.  You have to bring their shade, their bedroom, their dishes, their toys, their food, their SPECIAL TRIAL TREATS, even their bathroom accommodations, aka poop bags. And don’t forget the flashlight!  Real drag, finding the poop on the hotel lawn in the dark by stepping in it.  Or worse, finding some other dog’s poop in the dark at 2 am in the morning on the hotel lawn.  And how the heck do you clean the poop off your shoes in a miniscule hotel sink?

Having to remember all that stuff means a List. A Long List. Actually, at least two Long Lists. Because you need different Lists for the shows that are close by and the shows that require a hotel stay.  My Lists started simple. A string of mustn’t forget items on a page.  I added subcategories, breaking items down by themes: clothes, dog food, people food, dog equipment, etc.  The thematic divisions evolved into sublists for each container: sublists of “regular clothes” for the black duffel bag, “show clothes” for the small blue duffel bag, dog food that didn’t need refrigeration for the brown paper sack, kitchen items in the small laundry basket, and so on.

I added packing sequence to my Lists, beginning with the items that could be loaded into the van the weekend before the show weekend and ending with the items that I absolutely had to remember the morning I left.

I added Things To Do to the list: Program the route into the GPS. Fill the gas tank the day before.  Make the SPECIAL DOG TRIAL TREATS at least a week in advance, distribute them in labeled containers and stash them in the freezer.  And, doG forbid, do not forget the SPECIAL DOG TRIAL TREATS in the freezer the morning of the show.

I know people that say they don’t train the week before a show, so the dog will be fresh or less stressed, or whatever.  Me, I would train the week before the show, but I’m usually too busy revising my List or trying to cram too much stuff in the van-top carrier.