Dog Sitting

Brittany and Dan weren’t able to see his parents over the Christmas holidays and had planned on visiting them in February. (Dan works most Saturdays so scheduling weekends away is hard.)

In mid January they started planning the trip beginning with what to do with their two dogs. They had had a bad experience with the kennel the last time they left them and Brittany couldn’t find anyone she trusted to come and stay with them.

After talking to John… or maybe I didn’t ask him, I forget…. I called Brittany and said, “It’s far enough out that we don’t have plans yet for that weekend. We can come watch the pups.”

Then we went through all the “Are you sure?” and “You don’t have to!” and “It’s no big deal!” and “It will be fun!” comments.

It really worked out well. John ended up working with one of his sales guys in Charleston that Friday so we were able to get to her house by late afternoon to let Charlie and Ava out in the yard to run a bit before heading downtown for one of my favorite Charleston events, the monthly Art Crawl.

Usually the dogs have the run of the house when Brittany and Dan are out, but she was concerned about them running out the front door when we came in, so told us to keep them in the master bedroom whenever we weren’t there and overnight.

The first night everything went smoothly. The next morning when I opened their bedroom door they knocked me over heading to the back door, but turned around, taking a flying leap to lick my face “good morning” before heading out to take care of business.

We were in and out that day, so lots of luring them with treats up to the bedroom. (At least they were getting exercise going back and forth.)

That night however, after cuddling with them on the couch watching a movie we practically had to carry the lab, Ava, upstairs to go to bed. (And she weighs 70 lbs.)

About thirty minutes later I heard her whining. On and on and on. I got up to let them both out again, then tried to get them to go back upstairs. They were having none of that! So I said, “OK, your mom lets you sleep on the sofa during the day. You can just stay down here for the night.” I pointed to it and they walked over, turned to look at me with cocked heads and I said, “Lay down.”

Without waiting to see if they did or not (and pretty sure they didn’t) I turned off the light and started upstairs. As I got to the guestroom where I assumed John had been sleeping through all this, I heard him say, “Why are you licking my face?”

I turned on the light and somehow Ava had gotten by me on the dark steps and jumped on top of John and was licking him for all she was worth. I felt something at my ankle and of course little shadow Charlie had followed.

So I caved. I told them they could sleep on the bed with us, but AT THE BOTTOM!

Then I turned off the light, got under the covers, felt Charlie settle at my feet and Ava lay full across my body.

And I at least didn’t move for the rest of the night!