Leaving for a Few Days - Much More Difficult When You Have Dogs

This is Christy’s mom, Carol. I’m getting ready to take off with my husband for a conference. The conference is only a few hours away, so we are driving. It should be a lot of fun meeting and listening to people who know internet marketing, blogs, etc., inside out.

The tough part, and what almost kept me from going, was getting someone to take care of the pets. We have eight cats, four dogs, one bird, one fish, one Red Snapper turtle, and one rabbit who hangs out with our 10 chickens.

With all those pets, it was the dogs who were going to need the most attention while we were gone. We couldn’t leave the kids here alone, but if they went to spend the weekend with their grandparents, they would be 45 minutes away from the animals and unable to take care of them.

Anyone who gets a dog or two or whatever will realize that suddenly they are not free to just stop by the gym on the way home from work, or take off for a weekend to the beach or the mountains. Suddenly you have some creatures who depend on you to get home and let them out, or take them for walks, or feed them at a set time.

When I was young we had one dog, a cockapoo. He went everywhere with us: to the mountains, the parks, camping, across country to my grandparent’s farm in Minnesota. He visited almost every state west of the Mississippi. If the family went anywhere overnight, he went along. No problem.

Skip to today, and now I have all these animals that depend on me. There’s no way we could take the dogs with us to a conference, so I almost didn’t go. But then my mom offered to come stay with the kids here at our house. That solved the problem and now I’m free to go.

What if you don’t have a mom or dad to come to the rescue? Maybe you have a terrific neighbor who you could pay to take care of your pets. When I was young we left our canary at a friend’s house. Years later, when we had two cats, we had neighbors take care of them and we took the dog along.

Skip ahead a few more years, and my husband and I hired a professional to come over twice a day to take care of our three dogs, fish aquarium and bird.

Dogs are a big responsibility, but we have found there is usually a way to go on vacation for a few days while having the pets taken care of by someone responsible and capable.