Away for the Weekend

We humans go away for the weekend, and the dogs take over the house.



That's 7 dogs there, a record for the most dogs we've had at our house at 1 time. (Yes, I keep track.)

I rarely am away from home, because I don't like to leave the dogs. Although, I think that even if we didn't have any dogs, I wouldn't enjoy traveling anyway. But sometimes you just can't get around it. This time, we were visiting Tyler's family in Illinois.

Usually, leaving the dogs is very stressful to me. I generally have had to rely on non-dog people to watch them. But this time Sugar and her mom, Karen, offered to dogsit for us. All 3 of our dogs! At first I wasn't sure if Karen really knew what she was offering. Watching 4 dogs, including Sugar, and 1 of them paralyzed & incontinent? But I should have known that Karen was more than up for it.

Better yet, she even offered to dogsit the dogs at our house! It was the first time I have ever left the dogs and not worried nonstop over them while I was gone. Tyler said there were even moments when he totally forgot to think about them.

You can read more about the doggie happenings while we were gone on Sugar's blog.

Isis, her brother Otie, and their mom Jen even came over for a slumber party. They, in turn, were dogsitting Bandit for me, so he was there too.

I think the dogs had more fun with us away than they usually have when we're home.

While at the airport for our return flight, we saw a police dog that at first I thought was a Taiwan dog. She was lean and narrow, with long legs, long ears, and a long snout. And when I first spotted her, she was laying down with her front legs daintily crossed over like I have seen so many Taiwan dogs do. She actually reminded me a lot of Sugar and Popeye.







She turned out to be a Belgian Malinois. Now I wonder if Popeye has any of that in him.

The trip to IL and back was uneventful, and it was so good to be back home. It was the first time I had seen Bandit in a long time. When we got out of the car, his was the first face peering out the window to see us.

Not only were the dogs doing great, but Karen had done the dogs' laundry and had stocked us up with food. We had more food in our kitchen when we came back than when we left! Like the workings of a food fairy.

Tyler said that Karen is a saint for having agreed to housesit and watch our dogs, and Jen as well for having taken Bandit while we were gone on extremely short notice. I totally agree. I think Boomer, Phoebe, Popeye, and Bandit are glad we are back, but I don't think they'd mind too much if we left again as long as they had Karen & Jen.