[Dailydrool] Wyatt (and boarding)

[Elizabeth Lindsey]

> Could you take him to Daytona and find a boarding facility there?   
> Maybe a Drooler in the area could help. That way he would be  
> confined and could maybe get more strength in his good leg and you  
> could check up on him more often and be there if there is a problem.

We did this with our late, great Jane Basset the summer that we had  
to move from northwest Indiana (goodbye Purdue vet school) to  
Nashville. She was recovering very slowly from her January surgery  
for two ruptured disks and we lived in fear of her having yet more  
disk problems. So we took her with us and left her in boarding  
facilities in Nashville. We had to make several trips, so our patient  
Jane stayed at a froo-froo doggie daycare for small dogs, a vet's  
office, and an awful kennel.

The plus with taking a dog with you when you travel and then boarding  
it locally is that you're right there. If something should happen,  
you can get there in minutes as opposed to days. The down side is  
that you never know until you get there and it's too late just how  
good or bad the facility is.

I found that you can call on the phone and talk to the manager of the  
facility, check the Better Business Bureau for reports, and visit the  
facility's web site, but you don't really know what a place is like  
until you get there and it's too late. Being from out of state and  
without a local phone book, I find that it's hard to know if I'm  
getting the full range of selections from the Internet lists of  
kennels. Back when we decided to travel with Jane like this was  
before I discovered the Drool. If I'd known about the Drool, I would  
have asked if anyone could recommend a place to board a disabled  
basset with separation anxiety (which now in retrospect I wonder was  
also a touch of senior dementia?). I might even have asked if anyone  
would be able to host our special-needs friend in their home for  
three days.

As it was, we took potluck and sometimes got lucky. The vet's office  
was a good place to park Jane, though it definitely didn't have the  
ambience of home. The kennel appeared to be overrun by mice and not  
kept clean. It was also a huge operation, so I'm not sure how much  
attention she really got. The froo-froo day care was something else  
again. As far as care goes, it was fine. But the whole barnyard decor  
thing, complete with swinging red salon doors to each indoor run, was  
completely wasted on Jane. So was the supervised outdoor playtime.  
When we arrived to pick Jane up, we spotted her out in the play yard.  
All the other little doggies were running and playing with each other  
and the woman in the yard with them. Where was our Jane? Huddled up  
miserably against the door that led to the indoor runs, willing it to  
open and let her back in. She wasn't even interested in sniffing  
stuff in the yard, which was unusual for her. So much for play group.

Although we didn't think much of the kennel, the vet's office and the  
day care worked out fine, sight unseen. So when I started having to  
go back to my college (Sweet Briar) in Virginia for biannual meetings  
several years ago, I decided to take our Elsinore, Jane's worthy  
successor, with me and give the vet's office down the road a try.  
That worked out great. It's a no-frills vet's office kennel--cement  
and fencing for its indoor/outdoor runs--but it's only for a day and  
two nights, and I'm less than ten minute's drive away. When my  
meetings are over, I spring Elsinore and we go for long walks in the  
woods on campus and Elsinore finds dead deer carcasses to roll on.

When my mother travels to Detroit to see my sister, she leaves Daisy,  
her Jack Russell Terror, with a woman who boards dogs in her own  
home. My mother says Daisy gets very excited when she knows she's  
going to this woman's house and doesn't even look back at my mother  
when my mother heads out to the car after dropping her off there.  
It's a very good situation for everyone, including my sister. My  
sister banned Daisy from her home after Daisy peed on the back end of  
her dog. I'm still amused by this. For years Daisy would pee on my  
carpets (even though I'd take her out faithfully every hour on the  
hour to prevent the indoor peeing) and my sister couldn't understand  
my upset over this.  But then Daisy pees on her dog. I argue that dog  
pee is a lot easier to clean off a dog than it is a carpet, and it  
doesn't leave an odor on the dog like it does a carpet. But my sister  
isn't convinced. However, we do agree in hoping that the next dog our  
mother gets will be more reliably housebroken than this one is.

Something else to consider is the dog's state of health and the parts  
of the country you'll be traveling through. Shortly after our Jane  
strained her back by falling off a groomer's table while being dried,  
we took her with us from northwest Indiana down to Arkansas to see  
Ken's parents. Somewhere in nowhere southern Missouri, Jane stood up  
in the back seat, shook herself like dogs do, and then went all  
spaghetti legs on us. We managed to find a vet in Paragould,  
Arkansas, who gave us the absolutely wrong medication but also the  
number of a veterinary neurologist in Little Rock. We called the  
neurologist and told him we were on our way. We felt terribly  
grateful for being able to get Jane the medical care she needed in a  
part of the country that we hadn't though would have much in the way  
of advanced vet care (this was back in the late 1990s). Jane wound up  
spending a week at that vet's office getting steroids.

As with anything, there are pros and cons to the decision to travel  
with a dog and board it in a facility sight unseen. You just have to  
weigh the possible risks and benefits and take the dog's needs and  
condition into consideration. It's a very individual and situation-by- 
situation kind of decision to make.

Elizabeth