Member-only story
Boarding My Dogs
During the pandemic.
It’s been over ten years since I last boarded my dogs. We used to travel regularly for Memorial and Labor Day weekends. My Beagle never handled the transitions well, preferring instead to stage hunger strikes in retaliation for our desertion. After we got our Chihuahua mix, the hunger strikes stopped, and my mother-in-law came to our home to watch over the monsters.
This situation worked for everyone for years. We’d buy groceries and pay my mother-in-law for her time. My dogs enjoyed hanging out with “Ma.” And since we had a big house with a fully enclosed back yard with dog doors, my mother-in-law was only really needed for feeding, playing, and snuggling times.
Then Covid-19 hit with a vengeance. Our plans for traveling Memorial and Labor Day poofed, as everything related to them canceled indefinitely. Of course, my husband was still required to take a vacation, much like everyone else — to reduce company costs.
For our vacation to be as people-free as possible, we needed to find someone to care for our dogs while we were on our trip.
