Visit with Dog-Ma and Dog-Dad

We went to my parent's house in New Jersey for the holiday. There was much debate about bringing Hawk. My mom just got her hardwood floors stained, so she didn't want Hawk scratching them. She did say that he could come and sit on the deck or in the kitchen. I even tried putting my socks on Hawk, but then he slipped too much. We put him on the deck at first, but as it got cooler outside, we didn't think it was fair to leave him out there all night while we ate. We brought him inside and gated him in the kitchen.

Cheryl told us that we should keep the dog away from her mother because her mother was afraid of dogs. In turns out that Cheryl was the one most afraid of Hawk.

While we ate in the adjacent dining room, he could see us and he started to whine. We let him out of the kitchen to sit with us in the dining room, but he wasn't interested in sitting in the dining room. He started wandering all over the family room and living room, checking things out (it was his first time in these rooms, so he had to check them out first). He became too much of a distraction, and Cheryl got a little flustered, so back to the kitchen we brought him. I never wanted to let him out to begin with, but because we did when he whined, he knew that whining would work. As he went back to the kitchen, he started whining again, several times, but this time we all ignored him and continued our seder.

I took him for a walk with Bruce. It was a little difficult because there weren't lots of lampposts, trees, and bushes adjacent to the road. Most of the trees were set back from the road. So to find good trees to pee on, we had to walk into neighbors' yards. Hawk did poop on a tree in my parents' yard, but it was so dark out, even with the full moon, that I couldn't see where it was. I had to feel around for the warm, squishy mass. (I guess I could have sniffed around instead, but that would have been too gross.) The interesting thing is that Hawk was not nervous and shaky on this walk at all. When we walk in the city, his skin around his ribs shakes and his nose drips. But out in the country, he wasn't doing either of those things; he was breathing very normally. He must prefer the country.

As the evening progressed, Hawk had free reign of my parents' house. My mom stopped worrying about him scratching the floors, and he just wandered around. He even went up and down the basement stairs on his own, saying hi to people in different rooms. Such a good boy. And he got along so well with my parents, which makes me happy. They will be good babysitters in the future.