Day one, cell block, Live feed

My first day of going solo went ok. I have a lot more to do around the house by myself and Nicki just mopes around because Alison isn’t there. 2 weekends from now, when I go to PA, Nicki is supposed to be kenneled. As preparation I dropped her off today to have her stay there during the day today to get accomodated. It didn’t go well. The facility is brand new and clean. Once Nicki got inside she was very nervous just like she always is in new surroundings. Then we went back to the kennel area. It was a row of maybe 10 kennels on either side. It literally looked like a cell block. But what immediately caught my attention was the noise. The half dozen or so dogs in there were barking like mad and the noise was just echoing off the bare walls making it impossible to even hear what the woman was saying. I brought Nicki’s bed with, a few toys and her bottle that she drinks out of. I got out a few beggin strips and tried to comfort her. Then when we closed the door, the look of fear and panic on her face was horrible. The other dogs continue to bark incessantly as we walked out, I don’t look back for a last look as I knew it would only upset me more. The woman assures me she will have her out quite a bit during the day. She seemed very nice but it didn’t make me feel much better about leaving Nicki in that situation. The woman said that the dogs were barking so much only because she was in there, but somehow I have a feeling that is more of the status quo. I am going to see how she is when I pick her up. I have a feeling she will be majorly freaked out. I’m already scrambling in my head to come up with other options for her care while I am away. I can’t imagine what she would be like after being there for 4 days. Damn I never could have imagined how much owning a dog can impact other aspects of your life. We almost feel guilty about going away at this point. Until this trip next weekend, Alison and I haven’t been anywhere alone together for more than one day in the past year.

I have the live feed to my house set back up. I cranked it up so Ali could see Nicki. Right now I have it pointed at Tuki. To view it open windows media player and then do FILE/OPEN URL enter http://duf.homedns.org:9090 as the URL. Give it a few seconds to buffer and you will have a live feed of our great room. The video quality is pretty impressive.