The Dog Hotel

The first time we went to stay in The Dog Hotel I was very excited as I’d never been to one before and Pam made it sound really good.  She said we’d have THREE walks a day (imagine that!), our own room with room service, personal attention and new friends staying next door.  It sounded so good and apart from Pam staying with us, what more could we want? 

Well, we was so disappointed, in fact we thought it was more like a Kennel than a Hotel, no wonder Pam never stays with us.  It’s very boring, nothing to do all day except bark, with just one room to sleep in and a concrete yard to sit in.  There are no long and interesting walks and they never let us off the lead.  They don’t take us out in the car, or let us go in their house and we never meet any of the others, so can’t make friends properly.  Of course the people looking after us are nice enough, although Roma struggles if anyone speaks to her in French because she’s never learnt it and I have to translate, as you all know I’m a clever bi-lingual dog.

We’ve discovered a good way to get some extra attention is to sit outside in the rain and then when they make us go inside we sit on our beds and make them all wet.  This makes the people very upset and they dry us off and change our beds and spend ages with us, it’s such good fun to see them getting so worked up over us and earning their money.  However since Pam got us waterproof beds it’s not so effective.  Then I chewed a hole in our new waterproof cushion, I was so bored it just kinda happened, and oopps, it’s not waterproof any more.  When Roma saw it she said Pam wouldn’t be very happy about it, and of course she wasn’t, and she knew it was me, just how did she know that?

There’s a Cat Hotel next to The Dog Hotel, so the cats come with us and stay in their own Hotel, it would be a lot more fun if all the cats and dogs were staying in the same place, imagine the games we could play.  Jazz says their Hotel is ok, the cats have a special sun room where they sit in the daytime, but he doesn’t like it because he can’t go far, there are no mice to eat, and he has to hang out with the other cats, which he doesn’t really like doing.  Calypso says it’s a bit frightening, but heaps better than the lost animals home where she was living before she came to us.

Me an Roma love going in the car but the cats don’t, Pam has to put them in boxes because otherwise they would escape out the window.  Last time we went to the Hotel I told Jazz to make lots of noise in the car because it might make Pam change her mind about going, he said it wouldn’t be difficult because he HATES the car.  So we was all settled down for the journey, me an Roma good and quiet in the back, with Calypso bleating little Eow noises in her box and Jazz doing that horrible baby wailing in his box.  I’m sure Pam got the message loud and clear, but she didn’t change her mind and of course we all had to put up with the noise until we got there.  Roma was cross with me for suggesting it, she says it’s noisy enough at the Hotel without noise on the journey as well. 

It was getting hot inside the car so Pam closed all the windows and put on the heater that makes the air go cold, and that was when we all realised Jazz had pee’d a flood in his box.  No wonder he was making so much noise, he must have been paddling in it!  I bet even Pam with her human nose could smell it, good job he was in a box as otherwise we’d all have been sitting in it – YUK, YUK, YUK!  I thought it was a really inspired move and would definitely make Pam turn the car around and we could all go home, but she didn’t, her human nose must be even worse than I thought.  So we all had to sit with the smell for the rest of the journey, and it was quite horrible.  Cat pee has never been one of my favourite fragrances, no self-respecting male beast like myself would ever wear a cat pee fragrance, it’s just not cool and doesn’t attract the right kind of attention.

So we was all feeling quite stressed by the time we got to the Hotel and couldn’t wait to get out of the car.  Pam got out pretty quick and took the cats to their room first, so our ears and noses got a bit of peace and quiet at last.  Then she took us to our room and all the other guests started barking hello at us and I started barking back that we’d arrived and what an awful journey it was ………

Thank goodness we don’t go there very often and anyway, we’ve all discussed it and decided that the best Hotel we’ve ever stayed in is the one at home with Pam!