I travel a lot. Therefore we are always in a constant state of what to do with the dog. Now it's two dogs. Brody is a piece of cake - when he was an only dog and I traveled to CT, I could swing in with no notice and drop him at my in-law's house for a little grand-dog time. Glacier has added a new wrinkle to the negotiations.
Despite being very friendly with us when we first met her, she has major "stranger shyness" that we weren't prepared for at all. (Luckily it manifests in hiding under things, not being aggressive in any way.) This means that new people, even people she's met before but doesn't see regularly, require a fairly significant breaking in period.... Therefore dropping the pair with Grammy and Grandpa isn't quite on the roster yet. Soon we hope!
So... Needing to be in CT for a few days this weekend while my husband worked multiple 16 hour shifts required bringing both dogs with me to my dad's farm for the first time.
We arrived after our four hour drive and Glacier leapt from the car thinking we had just arrived in heaven! Suddenly she had acres and acres of fields to run in. She and Brody could get more than 20 feet from me without me constantly calling them back to me. She could run at full tilt (which is REALLY fast!) without having to slam on the brakes for the fence. She cavorted like she's been imprisoned her whole life... Well... She kind of has.
Then as I stood there smiling because I'd just achieved saint status in the dog's eyes for bringing her here... she stopped, dropped and rolled... in the nastiest, gooiest, most prolific pile of deer diarrhea she could find. Despite my yells of "NO! Leave it! Glaciiiiiiieeeeeer!!!! NASTY!!!!!!!" she proceeded to roll in it so that from under her chin to under the opposite rear leg, she was striped like a barbershop pole. White dog. Green-brown crap. She was covered. I particularly appreciated the chunks waggling at me from her collar as she trotted happily back toward me. I didn't like her right then.
I spent the next twenty minutes holding my breath while washing her from head to toe with a sponge, pitchers of warm water, and some dish soap. Her happy wore off quickly. Mine was sulking elsewhere.
With that debacle behind us, we went to visit my mom who had just gotten home from rehab after her hip replacement. No dogs allowed. So I left the two pooches in the back of the car and went in for a visit. A few peeks out the window and they seemed fine. When I went out, the hazard lights were flashing, the brand new radio that my husband had just installed in my car had the volume knob popped off (it went right back on - PHEW!) and my iced coffee was spilled onto my seat. Frick and Frack were lounging in the "way back" like nothing happened but I soon figured out (because at our next quick stop she did an abbreviated version of her antics again with less disastrous results) that Glacier had spotted a squirrel and had bounced through every inch of the car trying to get to it.... With no luck. (Note: it was at this point that I texted my husband to resume the search for a dog gate for the back of the car.)
Back at the farm we went for another romp only this time, wiser Dog-ma that I am, I kept her on the leash until we were far away from the scene of the earlier slide-by crapping. She romped and ran with Brody happily for 30 minutes and had no further interactions with poo. "Yay!", I thought, "Perhaps I'm safe letting her run as long as she's far away from the pine trees!?"
She spent the evening hiding under my dad's desk... Hoping that he and everyone else that stopped by would just go away. And the next day the walks in the field went great... But exceptional Dog-ma that I am, despite pushing eight feet several inches back from the edge of the "way back" door, shut Brody's foot in the door and broke his toenail off. Poor guy. He was already limping from romping too hard... And now he's really got something to limp about!
Glacier met my mom and step-dad for the first time... And hid under the table and behind couches for the duration until we headed back to the farm for another romp in the fields. Thirty or so minutes into the romp, my previous delusion came to a sliding halt as she found a fresh pile of deer doo in the field and promptly gave herself the barbershop pole swirl again. And again I washed the danged dog with a danged sponge and danged pitchers of danged warm water... which I had wisely left outside knowing that it likely wasn't the last time!
I felt like the mother that wants to leave her kids at the playground so someone else can watch them for a while and I can go get a massage... I didn't though. I reminded myself that at home, I love Glacier. At home she's funny and entertaining.
Did I mention that neither of them ate a bit of food for 36 hours? Apparently the high-end extraordinarily expensive dog food is just too intolerable without ground turkey added. (Don't judge us... We are trying to fatten her up!) So... Off to the store for some wet food to mix in and at last two dogs - one limping, the other smelling like poop and Ajax - finally gobbled up some food and passed out on their beds.
Thus far the first trip has included poop rolling, poop eating (I won't say which dog - you'll have to decide if they lick your face), two makeshift baths, a broken toenail, a wet coffee butt, a narrowly avoided call to explain how my new radio got broken, barely any real food (poop doesn't count as real food), two pounds of diatomaceous earth to help combat the terrible flea year, and me sharing a queen sized bed with 100lbs of snoring dogs while their perfectly good beds go unused on the floor. I'm such a sucker...
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