Dogs and Vacations

I love my dogs, but I must admit that figuring out what to do with them when we go out of town is a problem – and a costly one. We have two aging big dogs – Dylan and Jake. I have never been able to in good conscience put them in a kennel when we go away. So we have found a variety of neighborhood kids to come over multiple times a day to deal with them. The last time we tried this, our next door neighbor found them locked between two gates on a 3 x 4 slab of concrete one day, so we determined that we needed to move up a notch in the world of dog-sitting.

We live in suburbia, where dog-walkers and dog-sitters are not nearly as prevalent as they are in the city. We pondered how to find a dog-sitter – look for an ad on a bulletin board at Petco, put up an ad at the Giant, try to find a NOVA student. None of those seemed like such a sure thing and any takers would probably be perfect strangers to us.

I realized that a young teacher would be the ideal person to do this type of dog care – low salary, perhaps shorter work day, likelihood of being single. So I called Burgundy Farm Country Day School, where our children went through 8th grade. It seemed like the right place to find an animal lover, since the school is built around what once was a working farm. Sure enough, after my initial plea for help as an "alum" parent, I was connected to the perfect young woman. Yes, she just happened to have the dates that we needed available. Yes, she could stay at our house with Dylan and Jake. Yes, she could come over one day soon to meet the boys and find out what care they needed. Yes, we will pay $50 a day.

So I get big kudos for solving the dog-care problem, which was starting to loom large in our preparation for going to Israel soon. Our new dog-sitter sounds delightful on the phone. She should start working on her Kong throw since Jake is absolutely obsessed with retrieving. It feels good to go away knowing that our favorite dogs are in good hands.