Trial Run

     My morning was spent running errands, to include a trip to the pet food place to replenish our dog food and treat supply.
I not only found the fancy brand we were buying before, but a second one that Mamie likes. Add the treats, a small kong, and a toy, and I came away with a much lighter pocketbook. No guilt trip at aaalll here for what we’d planned for her later in the day.

          At noon we packed up dog, beach towel she’d slept on, a t-shirt I’d slept in, and drove to the kennel for our grand experiment. To the best of my knowledge, Mamie had never stayed in one and the day’s plan was to leave her there for a couple of hours to see how things would go.

          Instead of the quick get-away I’d hoped for, there was a delay while they called our vet back in Maassachusetts to verify her shots. (I must have been as rattled as a mom on the first day of school because I’d left all her paperwork back at the condo.) Mamie spent her time in the lobby sniffing and alternatively pulling to the door and licking my leg and staring up with big wet brown eyes to show how cute she was and why I shouldn’t leave her there. Or that’s what I interpreted.

          Finally I handed over the leash to the perfectly nice young lady there and walked resolutely out the door. At least, being a dog, she wasn’t able to cry out, “Mom! Don’t leave meeee!!”

          We went for lunch at a local landmark, a restaurant buried deep in the Florida pines on the Myakka river – down the kind of road where you expect to hear banjoes playing.

 Except we did. Turns out it was the Banjo Thursday and the picnic tables were full, people were pulling lawn chairs out of their trunks, and the parking attendants were waving us to any available shoulder on the road. 

The place was awash in white hair and flip flops. We retreated to inside the restaurant, which wasn’t a whole lot fancier than the outdoors. When I asked for water in addition to the beer I’d ordered, the waitress said, “It’ll have to be bottled – I can’t offer you any safe tap water.” I opted for just the beer.

Still, that beer was cold and our pulled pork was heaven even if our arms did stick to the table. Our success continued when we picked up Mamie and she was in one piece. The nice young lady said she didn’t cry or whimper and even figured out how to exit her individual dog door to the outside run. 

Once home, she crashed on the couch and slept as though she’d been abandoned for days.