The Dreaded Word: Vacation

One of the things I wanted to do in creating this blog, was to help humans understand canines better. I know we've been "man's best friend" for ages (and woman's) and a lot of you believe we give you unconditional love (and we do, sometimes). 

Still, a lot of you have settled into this really typical human pattern of "I'm the boss and I train you to fit my life". Fine. Dogs don't have weird egos that get in the way of deciding where I'm gonna pee today. Nevertheless, humans could use a little help when it comes to understanding us and that is what I write about here. Mostly. 

So about two weeks ago, this word VACATION started being thrown around the house. I ignore it for a bit because this is a favorite word of all humans, something they like to spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing even if it ends up not happening. Meanwhile, I'm thinking: vacation from what? You have a beautiful house; lots of food; nice walks. Wadda you gotta go anywhere else for? 

But go they did. Miss KnowItAll (my female owner) gives me lots of kisses and tells me she loves me before they leave, which is all well and good but HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TAKE CARE OF THEM when they are so far away????

Do you realize the amount of anxiety having your owners in some other location for a week produces? The scenarios you come up with? What if they never come back? What if they eat bad fish and you can't sniff it out for them before? What if they drown and I'm not around to rescue them? What if a raccoon infiltrates the kitchen? (http://www.fuckedinparkslope.com/home/attack-of-the-raccoons.html)

I couldn't live with that sort of guilt. 

So despite the fact that they usually ask their lovely friend Hannah to come stay with me, I always have a miserable time. It's not about her. I love that girl. Known her since she was like 12, I think. And she loves this old mutt and takes care of me but it's next to impossible to try to enjoy her company when I'm imagining them petting another dog somewhere in an exotic island. Do you know how good those dogs are at feigning homelessness?

Okay, so the obvious question is why don't they take me with, right?

To begin with, Hayes don't fly. I'm from Brooklyn. I got on one of those plane things once and once only. It almost gave me a heart attack and I don't want to ever repeat it again. I think my owners realized that when they saw the amount of hair I'd lost during the so-called flight.

So there's that. But I have been taken on vacation a few times by them. The trip is always the nicest. Singing in the car, listening to the news, frequent pit stops, a bit of prosciutto here and there... Not bad. But then when we get to the place it's back to hard for me. As I've outlined before we dogs have a lot of jobs and they only get multiplied when humans are "on vacation".

I mean one of the first times they took me with, do you know what I smelled right away? BEARS. I mean, bears! Who in their right mind wants to go camping where bears live? And who do you think had to warn them every time I smelled one? And then who do you think got yelled at for barking too much?

Vacation, smhacation. It's a lose lose for us dogs.