First Impressions

To our great dismay, our regular dogsitter for Stanley is abandoning us -- she has gotten her Ph.D. and is leaving this summer for an exciting new job in the big city. (Not surprisingly, our dogsitting gig couldn't quite match the salary that the business school was offering. And actually, we're quite delighted for her.) We haven't managed to find a new dogsitter yet, or at least not one who is available when we're next going to be away.

So, we're going to check out a "doggie camp" boarding place. He's been to doggie day care up in Virginia (with his cousin Abby), and apparently loves it. And this place supposedly has little rooms for the overnight dogs, so at least he won't have to be in a cage. (The boy hates cages. He's a freedom-lovin' dog.)

This place requires an "interview" before a dog is allowed to board there. Since they spend the day playing with other dogs, the purpose of the interview is to make sure that they get along with the other dogs (as well as the human staff members). We were supposed to go today, but it ended up being a comedy of errors.

First, Stanley needed a bordatella (kennel cough) vaccination to be able to go there. For those of you who are not dog owners, bordatella vaccinations are annoying because 1) they only last six months, and 2) you only need them if you're going to be boarding your dog or otherwise have him in extended contact with lots of other dogs. So, of course Stanley wasn't up to date on this. The vet had walk-in hours on Saturday, so we had planned to take him then, but ended up going out to the Farmer's Market and lunch with some friends and completely forgot about it. So we went to the vet this morning, but had to call the doggie camp and let them know we would be late for our appointment. Then, when we were at the vet, I noticed that we had Stanley's UNC collar on -- which is the one without his identification tag, another requirement for the camp. (The ID tag is on his OSU collar.) So we had to call again, and ended up rescheduling for later in the week. But then we remembered another appointment we had on the rescheduled day, so Mike had to call them yet again to reschedule one more time. Yikes! Annoying customers already and we haven't even set foot in the place.

Good thing they're more interested in the dog's behavior than ours!