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| But, what if I discover I have abandonment issues? |
We’re going to go to Los Angeles and San Francisco, with stops in Napa and Healdsburg. It seems first to Grace (and later I agree) that if we can find some place that would take Gizmo while we are on the road, our travels would be easier.
But finding the right doggie camp or caretaker is a lot like finding a good baby sitter for your first child. We worry about the person or the organization. Would they really care for him? Would they be kind to him and perhaps love our #dog as much as we do? And, perhaps most difficult of all, would Gizmo miss us? (and would he need retraining if the person or facility applies different standards to his behavior?)
Russell, our daughter has two dogs, Tucker and Ginger, and she says that they love, love, love the doggy care center, #Sam’s Green Paw, at 11450 Ventura Blvd., where they make friends with other, similarly sized dogs and where there are no canine bullies. In fact, they run into the facility and go upstairs to join their friends without a look backwards.
We… OK, I’m…. a little doubtful: how could Gizmo prefer the company of strangers to the owners who love him? Could he spend a week there, while we gallivant around to wineries, see Rita Moreno in a one-person show, have dinner with my brother, go to an art opening at Mondavi Winery for our friend, Jimmy Jarrett, and generally enjoy ourselves? (Note: we also plan to hear the Mill Valley Philharmonic give a FREE Friday night concert featuring Mahler’s First Symphony. This would be the first live performance of any Mahler we have attended since we heard the biographical lectures by Robert Greenburg, who said that Mahler was a depressed man and boy. When he was only four years old and his mother asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, Mahler said, “A Martyr.”)
We call Sam’s Green Paw, and ask some pointed questions (beginning with “how much will this cost?” because this is a doggy care center in Los Angeles. It turns out that it was about $35 a day, about what we would pay for individual care in Palm Desert.
We are warned that there is an hour-long observational test, during which they take in the dog and see how he reacts to others. If he passes, then he is accepted. We are concerned that Monday morning as we search for Sam’s Green Paws with an unsuspecting Gizmo in the back seat. Will he like Sam’s? Will he pass The Test and be accepted? Will we want to board him there? If he flunks, we can always take him for the 6 ½-hour drive to Northern California, but will he be bored being penned in all those hours?
We park the car and enter the same time a gentleman carrying a small, white, trembling miniature poodle named Cassie arrives. We go in, meet the friendly greeter, who takes the dog, gives us back his leash and, while I am filling out the entry form (emergency phone numbers, etc.) and another employee is going over Gizmo’s shot record, Gizmo trots up the stairs to the pet care facility. Like my second son, Joel, on the way to his first day in kindergarten, he never looks back. We can see on the closed circuit TV sets in the lobby that there are two large areas, one for bigger dogs like boxers, great Danes or German Shepherds and another for the smaller, yappier dogs like ours. We observe Gizmo entering the smaller-dog area and, as he does at the dog parks in Santa Fe and Palm Desert, he sniffs and greets every dog there. In seconds, he is in the middle of an impromptu pack of nearly two-dozen dogs, wagging his tail, running after some, sniffing the asses of others, with a big grin on his face.
The attendant who brought him upstairs returns in far less than a minute, perhaps in seconds, and says, “He will be fine.” Gizmo has passed his big Sam’s Green Paw test.
But Cassie is a different story. She sits, trembling, by the window, looking away from the dogs, ignoring the friendly advances of the attendants and being evidently quite miserable. While we complete the forms, leaving food and treats for Gizmo, asking that he get a bath before we pick him up, etc., Cassie is brought back to her owner with the bad news: she will not be accepted at Sam’s Green Paw because she would be miserable the entire time she was there.
We leave, get into the car and begin missing Gizmo before we open the door. But we tell ourselves that he will have a wonderful time at Sam’s, that it will be like a week in a dog park for him. We enter the address of our friend Hollie’s home in Orinda and we drive to the 101 Highway North. Gizmo will be fine. Gizmo will have a good time. Gizmo will be better than all right.
But, what if he doesn‘t miss us as much as we miss him?
We… OK, I’m…. a little doubtful: how could Gizmo prefer the company of strangers to the owners who love him? Could he spend a week there, while we gallivant around to wineries, see Rita Moreno in a one-person show, have dinner with my brother, go to an art opening at Mondavi Winery for our friend, Jimmy Jarrett, and generally enjoy ourselves? (Note: we also plan to hear the Mill Valley Philharmonic give a FREE Friday night concert featuring Mahler’s First Symphony. This would be the first live performance of any Mahler we have attended since we heard the biographical lectures by Robert Greenburg, who said that Mahler was a depressed man and boy. When he was only four years old and his mother asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, Mahler said, “A Martyr.”)
We call Sam’s Green Paw, and ask some pointed questions (beginning with “how much will this cost?” because this is a doggy care center in Los Angeles. It turns out that it was about $35 a day, about what we would pay for individual care in Palm Desert.
We are warned that there is an hour-long observational test, during which they take in the dog and see how he reacts to others. If he passes, then he is accepted. We are concerned that Monday morning as we search for Sam’s Green Paws with an unsuspecting Gizmo in the back seat. Will he like Sam’s? Will he pass The Test and be accepted? Will we want to board him there? If he flunks, we can always take him for the 6 ½-hour drive to Northern California, but will he be bored being penned in all those hours?
We park the car and enter the same time a gentleman carrying a small, white, trembling miniature poodle named Cassie arrives. We go in, meet the friendly greeter, who takes the dog, gives us back his leash and, while I am filling out the entry form (emergency phone numbers, etc.) and another employee is going over Gizmo’s shot record, Gizmo trots up the stairs to the pet care facility. Like my second son, Joel, on the way to his first day in kindergarten, he never looks back. We can see on the closed circuit TV sets in the lobby that there are two large areas, one for bigger dogs like boxers, great Danes or German Shepherds and another for the smaller, yappier dogs like ours. We observe Gizmo entering the smaller-dog area and, as he does at the dog parks in Santa Fe and Palm Desert, he sniffs and greets every dog there. In seconds, he is in the middle of an impromptu pack of nearly two-dozen dogs, wagging his tail, running after some, sniffing the asses of others, with a big grin on his face.
The attendant who brought him upstairs returns in far less than a minute, perhaps in seconds, and says, “He will be fine.” Gizmo has passed his big Sam’s Green Paw test.
But Cassie is a different story. She sits, trembling, by the window, looking away from the dogs, ignoring the friendly advances of the attendants and being evidently quite miserable. While we complete the forms, leaving food and treats for Gizmo, asking that he get a bath before we pick him up, etc., Cassie is brought back to her owner with the bad news: she will not be accepted at Sam’s Green Paw because she would be miserable the entire time she was there.
We leave, get into the car and begin missing Gizmo before we open the door. But we tell ourselves that he will have a wonderful time at Sam’s, that it will be like a week in a dog park for him. We enter the address of our friend Hollie’s home in Orinda and we drive to the 101 Highway North. Gizmo will be fine. Gizmo will have a good time. Gizmo will be better than all right.
But, what if he doesn‘t miss us as much as we miss him?
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