While my husband and I were vacationing in Nashville, we left Toby with my sister and her family. My nephew thought it was great because it gave him a snuggle buddy. The rest of the household was less thrilled with the experience.
We hadn't even reached our destination yet when I received this photo with the accompanying text from my sister, "So ty ty from peeing on ur stuff." There was a winky emoticon with it, but I still felt guilty that Toby was causing problems.
He settled in relatively well otherwise, except for the occasional molestation of the family's ancient Pomeranian, Sooner. I had hoped that he would play with their young lab mix, Olive, but he was afraid of her (probably because of her size and rambunctiousness), so that didn't happen. Still, the whole gang managed to get along well enough to share the couch at naptime.
Not sharing so well was my sister's cat, Hutch. He took on Dr. Jones' role as bed stealer, leaving Toby to drape himself over the arm of the chair to sleep. As you can see, sleeping is his favorite.
When I called my niece to wish her a happy birthday the day before we came back into town, I asked if she was tired of Toby yet. She said, "Is it okay to tell the truth?"
It turned out he'd peed in her room three times since I'd left him, in addition to all the other times he'd peed in different rooms of their house. Heavy sigh.
So it looks like he's probably going to have to be boarded for future vacations. If he weren't such a terrible traveler we'd take him with us, but he whines incessantly on even brief car trips. I think we can all see why he drew the short straw when his original family needed to pick a dog to give up.
Still, he's a sweet guy and he does pretty well at home as long as he gets lots of opportunities to go outside. I hope we can improve his potty training over time, even though he's already a mature dog. Either way, I still love him and enjoy him during the 99% of the time when I'm not cleaning up after him. We just need to work on the 1%.
I'll be babysitting Titan, the grandson's great dane, in August. He's stayed here all day long, several times. He's housebroke and sleeps a lot, but he wants my dog Iris to play ALL THE TIME. She is older and wants to play awhile and then stop. Titan does not know the word "stop". We'll see how it goes.
Posted by: Donna W | May 03, 2012 at 07:29 AM
I have a great kennel ! Deogi Pointe up by the airport
Posted by: Spyder | May 04, 2012 at 01:56 AM
I refrained from outlining all the house horrors so I wouldn't ruin your trip. Because I'm nice like that. He's a sweet dog, but so. not. housebroken.
Posted by: kcyogachick | May 04, 2012 at 10:40 AM