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| She learned to push the button 5 miles from home on our return |
We got back on Friday January 13th from an epic road trip. Murg collected the statistics on the trip and posted on FB:
"Epic roadtrip complete
Sat 11/19/22 thru 1/13/23
54 Nights in 2 houses, 8 hotels, 3 AirBnB
8,080 miles
19 families with 45 individuals visited
Sofy lost count of the number of dog parks visited but did learn to open the car window herself during the last three days on the road."
The biggest reason we drove to Tucson was because of Sofy. OK, not the biggest reason but a huge factor.
Our car was a Tetris puzzle and Sofy's block was right behind the passenger seat. Before you start to even feel sorry for her for one single minute, trust me, she had plenty of space. She could not have the window opened on the highway but we opened it a crack or a few inches when on non-highway traveling.
We had her water dish and food dish readily accessible and a few toys to play with which she ignored and looked at disdainfully:
"You want me to play with that thing AND keep track of every truck, car, RV and squirrel on the horizon?"
On our VERY LAST DAY we found a marrow bone at a truck stop, bought it on a whim and she gnawed at that for the entire day. Why did we not buy her a bone before that? As an aside, truck stop convenience stores are the BEST, and change depending on the part of the country you are in. We could have wasted a lot more time browsing them if we did not have a destination for that evening.
DOG PARKS: Our most common search on Maps was "Dog parks close to me". We found some terrific ones. The best one was the dog park combined with a Disk golf course. I cannot understand who thought that was a good idea. Sofy only chased and stole one disk from a dog owning player. When we pulled up to this particular course, it was not fenced in like many of the others, and Sofy took off like a bat our of hell across a ravine. She usually kept an eye on us, because who wants to be left in the middle of Oklahoma or Minnesota? Rescue dogs in general worry about being left and apparently Australian cattle dogs are attached to a single family member. Truth be told Sofy kept her eye out for Rod, and if he was not in view she looked for me (chopped liver). As long as we got her a long dog park run, she was tired enough to sleep for an average of 23 minutes in a day of driving. Someone in the car had to keep their eye out for those squirrels.
SLEEPING: Every hotel we booked had a king size bed. The first few nights we brought her dog bed in from the car and gave up after that. She slept some where around us on the king size bed more often than not on Rod's side leaving him about 9 inches of space for his legs.
The very best hotel for Sofy in the entire trip was Magnolia in St Louis. They have a person with a job description of PET CONCIERGE and they do not charge for pets. Sofy got a bag of dog biscuits upon arrival and because she is so special she got some when we left. We had a 20 minute chatty conversation with the pet concierge. They hand out a list of pet friendly restaurants, close dog parks, vets, doggie day care facilities, pet stores etc. Take note all of you hotel owners (usually chains) who charged us $75 as a non-refundable pet cleaning fee. Part of my search for the nightly least expensive hotel, was their pet charge. In a pinch we had to pay $75.
Once we got to Tucson we discovered that our AIRBNB was .5 miles from a really nice dog park. We met a lot of snowbirds, and their dogs. For 6 weeks Sofy was a regular there.
EATING: on our westbound trip Sofy ate one bowl of food for the entire 4.5 day trip. Even at home she is not food driven and does not gobble her food. Eastbound she averaged one bowl per day on the 10 day trip. She did finish ice cubes from drinks and I bought her Slim Jims as her treat.
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