Last weekend, Magic and I went on a little road trip to visit my best friend from vet school, Sara, in New Hampshire. It’s been a little while since I was up there because the past two years have been what they have been. Since I was last there, Sara bought herself, I believe she calls it, a condex (a term I had never heard before she bought this place). She bought it *right* before COVID put everyone in lockdown. Sara also had to say, “Good-bye,” her wonderful old kitty, Silas, and back in November added two new kittens to her life, Mona and Ralphie. I had a few things to catch up on with her, and it was wonderful to do so.
Magic has been on one other “Girls’ Weekend” with me when my sisters and niece rented an Airbnb in the Catskills back in July 2019. Other than that, she doesn’t do much traveling without Rookie and certainly not without her favorite person, Justin. She was happy to go along though. (Rookie on the other hand apparently had a mild existential crisis without us.) Magic’s generally an easy traveler. For the most part, you’d never know she was in the car. I wouldn’t necessarily have planned to bring either of them except that I was going to be driving home on Monday, and Magic is currently not allowed freedom in the house when no one is home. I didn’t want Justin to have to worry about what to do with her while he was at work.
During our visit, we went to the beach in Hampton twice for a walk. We got lucky both times, and the tide was low, meaning there was a bigger beach to walk along. She said, “Hello,” to a small dog as we got onto the beach each walk and mostly did OK ignoring other dogs during the walks. (It’s hard when pretty much all of them were off-leash, chasing balls or each other, and she was attached to me because I don’t trust her recall with that level of excitement happening. And also- seagulls are great fun to stalk.) On Sunday morning, she escaped Sara’s yard and made friends with her human next door neighbors and made one of their opposite side neighbors’ dogs uncomfortable til I caught her at their back fence. She then stole some cat food while I left her with Sara for a bit to meet another old friend and his boyfriend for breakfast. Maybe those two things were a bit less than ideal, but I remain glad that she did not find herself any of Sara’s roommate’s pot because this girl has had enough peeing problems in her life. Magic probably believes that she and Mona are best friends, even though Mona barely got to the point of considering not hissing at her by the time we left. Ralphie essentially lived in Sara’s basement any time Magic was in the house.
Magic’s biggest test of the weekend was a trip to Newburyport, Massachusetts. The weather was beautiful, and the amount of people out and about with bikes, strollers and their dogs was pretty intense. Because Rookie is so reactive to those things, and they both are so much worse together, she really hasn’t experienced being walked in a city setting before. She also had never accompanied us dining in a restaurant before last Sunday. At the end of our trip, I told her that I’d give her a “B” for her overall behavior. (There were a couple of brief lunging incidents at a single bike and a couple of dogs and one unfriendly interaction with a guy who definitely came on too strong for her comfort. I can’t really blame her for barking at him like that when he came up from behind, bent over her without asking anything about her and proceeded to ask her for kisses. He then continued to stand there staring at her and telling her he wasn’t afraid of her when she did bark at him. Use some common sense, sir.) Sara was a kinder judge, pointing out that Magic did look to me more often than not when I asked her too and upgraded her all the way to an “A” after she learned that Magic had never been out to eat before.
Magic did, overall, do very well with that part of the day, mostly laying on the mat I had brought along for her. There were several other dogs at surrounding tables, and we were right next to where many people and their dogs were waiting for their own tables. During our time seated on the patio, she only tried to take out our table out once shortly after we sat down as she was trying to clean up some stray food from the ground. Once we made it back to Sara’s we were all pretty tired from the experience out (and the ~8 miles of walking we had done).
Somehow, between southern NY and home, Magic did get her left front leg stuck in her harness. Thankfully, she was fine after I got her harness off back in the house. I guess I’ll have to double check its tightness before our next long drive to be sure he leg can’t fit between the strap and her body. I’m happy to report that Rookie was happy to see us both, running off to chase his sister immediately and promptly returning to boop my eye with his nose. I was a little worried that he wasn’t going to speak to me for several days, especially when Justin said he had been exceptionally needy, not leaving his side, not settling in to go to bed like he normally would, seeming a little depressed. I would say I’d take him on a solo trip one of these days, but it takes him a while to settle down in the car, he barks obnoxiously every time you park/arrive at your destination, he may or may not have tried to chase Sara’s cats, and he definitely would’ve been over threshold in Newburyport within 5 minutes of exiting the car. I love him to pieces, but that boy has got plenty of issues to work out before a trip like that.
“A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles.” ~ Tim Cahill
