Moose and Lally are very different in the personality department. Moose is easy going and relatively hard to rattle; Lally is a little more high strung and nervous. You could call her my little Velcro dog — she tends to stick close to my side.
This actually made things a little easier for me on the road last week. When we stopped for walks, if there was a place where we could wander that was far enough away from the road, I could drop Lally’s leash and let her roam free. She’d generally stay close enough that I didn’t worry. When she did wander, all it took from me was a whistle or a kissy noise and she’d come running.
She’s such a good little dog.
Moose, on the other hand, would walk and keep walking, regardless of how much I screamed his name.
Not that either dog was totally themselves on the road — it’s hard to relax when you spend the day in a car and a night in a strange motel in a strange city. I lost count of how many times my four-legged companions barked me awake at one unfamiliar sound or another.
I minded the midnight serenade the least on Tuesday night, when our day’s journey stopped somewhere in Iowa, just west of Des Moines. The motel was a little family-owned place where the sign at the front desk read ABSOLUTELY NO CATS. Thankfully, dogs were okay.
The room had two doors: open opened to the outside and the other opened onto the lounge where muffins and juice would be served in the morning. I’m not sure why that second door made me nervous, but it did. But the most relief of all came from having my dogs with me; every time they barked, I jolted awake. If I had been traveling alone, I don’t know if I would have slept at all that night.