I got back Sunday evening from nine days with my family on Santa Catalina Island, CA. We had a wonderful, sunshine-filled family vacation at the Hamilton Cove condo complex in Avalon. During that time, Barbara and I missed Callie very much, but we knew she was in the good hands of Carter Patrick Carrigan, professional pet sitter. Carter comes to our house three times a day to walk Callie, which is great, but it’s not as much exercise as she’s used to getting.
Clearly suffering from some separation anxiety, Callie went nuts when Barbara and I walked into the house and let Callie out of her crate. First she ran and jumped back and forth between us as fast as she could. It was as if she couldn’t decide which of us to greet first, so she tried to greet us both, individually, at the same time. Which is pretty hard to do.
Next, she ran back to her crate to retrieve (after all, she is a Golden Retriever) her “Stinky,” which is her soft and fluffy now half-puppy security object, so named because “stinky” is what our granddaughters call their security blankets. She presented Stinky to me, and we played a short game of “let’s both hold this for a while.” Which is a game Callie invented.
When my family goes to Catalina, son Brad and I go across the Catalina Channel (about 30 miles) in his fishing boat. Somewhere along the line, on the return trip, I got a small scratch on my leg — probably from unloading fishing rods or other gear. Of course, as soon as Callie settled down, she spotted my scratch and gave it a few “wound healing” licks.
Then, predictably, Callie ran to the back door to invite me to play soccer in the back yard. How could I pass up such a wonderful invitation? So we went into the back yard and played soccer for about ten minutes. Which is about my attention span. Callie would play for hours.
I’m sure Man’s Best Friend was pretty lonely for nine days, but she made up for it in the first thirty minutes after our return. And from then on, things were pretty routine — perhaps with Callie staying a little closer than normal to Barbara and me.
What better welcome?
