[Dailydrool] Kenneling Bassets

[Yolanda]

Our Buddy (three-year-old Basset) and Harvey (ten-year-old Welsh Corgi mix) 
have never been kenneled in their lives ... until this spring when my 
husband and I went to the Waddle here in Michigan.  I checked the kennel 
out, talked to and met with the woman who owns it, spoke with several people 
who had used her services, and then stopped in unexpectedly once.  I was 
very pleased with both her and her kennel, so we made the decision to board 
the boys there while we were away.

After we had dropped them off, we could still hear them barking a mile down 
the road and I thought, it's okay, they will be fine.  They had their beds, 
they had their food, they had their toys, and there were only three dogs in 
the whole darned place.  The other dog was very calm and quiet, so I figured 
that once Buddy and Harvey had calmed down, they would do okay.

When we returned on Sunday afternoon, I could hear the boys barking a mile 
down the road and I thought, it's okay, they've just seen the truck and know 
we are back.  They had destroyed their beds and toys, hadn't eaten one piece 
of their food, and had barked the whole time we were gone.  They had even 
managed to get the third dog to barking nonstop, too.

After paying the woman and collecting what was left of the boys' belongings, 
we loaded them up in the backseat of the truck, fastened them in and headed 
for home.  We thought it was strange that neither one of them tried to jump 
on us or give kisses, but we figured they just wanted to get to their own 
home.

To make a long story short, neither one of them would come near us for the 
first twenty-four hours.  If we tried to pet them, they pulled away and 
almost acted afraid of us.  They were hungry, but they wouldn't take any 
food from our hands.  They simply didn't want anything to do with either of 
us.  It was almost two full days before things began to fall back into our 
old routine.

If you have never kenneled your dog before, it might be a good idea to find 
out if you could leave them at the kennel a couple of times for a few hours, 
and perhaps even for a night.  That way, both the people at the kennel and 
your dog will have a chance to get to know each other.  I so wish I would 
have thought of doing that with Buddy and Harvey; it might have made the 
whole weekend a lot easier on them.

Yolanda Lyons
Buddy (Nope, nebber goin' der aggen!)
Harvey (Just because you came back didn't mean that we would forgive you 
that easily!)