Update: I’ve been scolded, gently, by my daughter-in-law and now my son. They’ve reminded me that Toby the Dog’s actual “first road trip” was to their house in Allen about, oh, two months ago.

Mea culpa: My memory isn’t too good some times. Perhaps it was the hotel stay and the brief moment of anxiety that the dog exhibited that blocked my memory of the earlier trip.

I stand corrected.

***

You may choose to believe this or not. It doesn’t matter to me. A few followers of this blog have asked me about Toby the Dog.

I now have some news to report. It’s no biggie.

Toby has just completed his first road trip. He did beautifully.

He’s about seven, maybe eight months old. The only vehicle travel he’d done was around Amarillo. Well, we just returned from a quick overnighter to Oklahoma City.

We left Friday afternoon and returned Saturday afternoon. We blazed east on Interstate 40, checked into our hotel room, then left for the evening to attend a gospel concert. He travels beautifully in the car. He sleeps most of the time and isn’t interested generally in sticking his head out of the window and having the wind blow in his face.

What did we do with the dog once we got to the hotel? We brought his kennel. We put him inside. He yapped, whined and whimpered when we left the room. We stopped briefly at the front desk and asked the check-in clerk: “OK, we’re leaving for a few hours and we left our dog inside our room, in his kennel. Is anyone checked into either of the adjoining rooms?” She said someone was in one of the rooms. “Will they hear the dog? He’s upset that we’re leaving.” She said if they complain, she’ll just tell them we’re out for the evening and that we’ll return … and that the dog will settle down.

My wife told the clerk that she thinks he’ll “settle down quickly once he realizes what’s going on.”

We left for the evening and returned about 10:30 p.m. We asked the clerk as we walked in, “Any problems, any complaints?” She said, “I didn’t hear a thing and no one said a word.”

Excellent!

So, there you have it.

Toby the Dog passed his first major test away from home.

We’ve advised him there’ll be many more trips like this coming up. We think he’ll be ready.