Dog MaMa's Thoughts on Travel

John left for a 2 week trip to visit his girls in Tennessee and Virginia and for the Nagle Invasion (annual sibling get-together) in Maryland.  I couldn't go because ----- how can I leave my dogs behind for 2 weeks?  I'm beginning to see how that could become a problem.

My sister-in-law and neighbors are good for a long weekend of coming to feed the dogs twice a day.  But 2 weeks would be too much to ask.  I could board them for $100/day ($25x4), but that's $1400 for a 2 week vacation.  Yikes!  Besides which, I wouldn't want to be away from them that long.

I could arrange someone to live here, but who?  I have no idea.

So I'm stuck!  Not that I mind being stuck.  I'm a home body.  I love everything HOME!  Every spoon.  Every bowl.  Every stick of furniture.  Everything I want is here.  I've travelled enough of the world already, and find that living is so much easier at home. 

I'm all about stress reduction and contentment. When I travel to some glorious vista, or stay in some swanky hotel or charming B&B, all it does is make me sick that I can't OWN it, can't stay there and claim it as my own.  And the more charming it is, the more other people think so too so it's way too expensive to ever move there.  So I'm always a visitor, except in my own home.  Plus which, when travelling, I've noticed that 80% of the time is spent doing the same things one does at home -- eat, sleep, watch TV, surf the web, read emails, wash clothes, fold, pack, brush teeth, comb hair, bathe, drive, sit on the john, figure out what to wear.  The other 20%, we pay exhorbitant amounts of money to enjoy, at extreme inconvenience to ourselves.  So, I guess I'm not much of a supporter of the tourist industry.

I do intend to go to dog trials, but in those cases I get to take at least 2 of my dogs with me.  And trials only last a few days.  And John is generally home with the ones left behind. Maybe at work all day but home at night.  In some cases I'll stay in my pop-up camper, which is fun for me.  In other cases, there are pet friendly hotels popping up all over the country so it's easier to travel with dogs now.  When John retires and we begin road travelling to various national parks, they now allow pets there, too.  The culture is starting to understand that pets are family members.

I also like to hike, visit museums, visit friends.  But I don't miss that enough to leave my pets behind for long, nor ever get rid of them.  So I guess that's another reason my friends have started calling me by a new handle: