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At the Motel 6August 20, 2010 Travvy and I are spending the night at the Motel 6 in Leominster, Mass. It's astonishing how much one dog and one human can schlep for an overnight stay. From where I sit I see lined up on top of the desk-bureau, from right to left, my overnight bag, Travvy's travel bag (used to be Allie's grooming kit bag), my handy-dandy burnt orange tote bag from Duluth Trading, a jar of peanut butter, a generic plastic water bottle (I bought it to do my first M.V. Land Bank Cross-Island Hike with -- in 1993), and my handy-dandy chocolate brown messenger bag from L. L. Bean. The handy-dandy chocolate brown messenger bag, which replaced my last backpack as my all-purpose everyday carry-all, transported Hekate the laptop, along with her mouse, mouse pad, and cord. This is the first time I've traveled with a computer. My room doesn't have wi-fi, but typing in a motel room "on the road" is still pretty cool. To the left of the (empty) messenger bag is the motel-provided TV, which (of course) is off, and to the left of that is Travvy's wire crate, with a couple of chew toys, two old bones, and an empty feed dish in it. Trav's soft crate is in Malvina Forester, whom I can see out the window of room 124, which is on the first floor. Malvina is, uncharacteristically, locked. I'm so in terror of locking myself out of my car that I do a visual key check about every five minutes: Car keys? Check. Room card key? Check. Every time I leave the room I pat myself down to make sure nothing's missing. Travvy almost didn't get supper tonight, because he scarfed down half a bag of Charlee Bears (small, disk-shaped, reasonably healthy training treats -- less than 3 calories per treat, sez the bag) without permission when I left him alone in the car for less then 10 minutes. That's why almost everything edible is out in Malvina with the soft crate. If I were hiking in the backcountry, I'd hang my food cache from a tree limb to keep it from bears. Since I'm driving in central Massachusetts, I stow it in the car to keep it from Travvy. The Motel 6 in Leominster is within walking distance of several fast-food restaurants. Easy walking distance. Standing at the entrance to the motel parking lot, one can see all at the same time Wendy's, Papa Gino's, Burger King, and McDonald's. Wendy's was tempting, but I went for BK, tried and true. This was worth it for several reasons, starting with the fries, the barbecue sauce, and the grilled chicken sandwich, but it was especially worth it because the soft drink dispenser has suggested pairings for each kind of soda: Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, root beer, Dr. Pepper, and maybe something else, I forget. Since I am currently copyediting a book on wine tourism in the Napa Valley, in which well-heeled people fork over big bucks to learn what pricey wine to pair with their free-ranging, organically grown gourmet meal, I thought this was pretty funny. Did it start off as a parody, or is this evidence of the affluenza's enthusiasms trickling down to the fast-food-eating class? One thing they got wrong, however. They suggest pairing Diet Coke with healthy-sounding things like grilled chicken salad and a veggie wrap. No no no. The big appeal of diet drinks is that they neutralize -- at least in the consumer's mind, and possibly the mind of the critical beholder who is looking for signs of remorse on the consumer's part -- the effects of bacon and cheese triple Whoppers, or pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni. Diet Coke pairs well with anything. It's like the universal donor blood type. Whatever, it's intriguing. Don't be surprised if any/all of this finds its way into the Squatters' Speakeasy. So why are Travvy and I spending the night at the Motel 6 in Leominster when we have a perfectly good place to sleep in West Tisbury? Because I signed us up to compete in a Rally trial in Fitchburg this evening. We left the island on the 12 o'clock boat, and by chance wound up sitting near Sean C., whose mother, Ann, was one of my closest friends through my early years on MV. Ann is a nurse, currently working at M.V. Hospital, but Sean said she's about to leave for Alaska, the far north of Alaska, on a reservation north of the Arctic Circle. I asked if Travvy could stow away in her luggage, and told Sean to give my best to Ann and tell her to get in touch if she felt like it. Travvy traveled wonderfully. First he rode shotgun, as usual, but at the IHOP just before the Bourne Bridge I transferred him to his soft crate, along with a peanut-butter-slathered bone and Leo (remember Leo, the rubber toy named after Leonardo da Vinci?) with several treats stuffed into his belly. Trav slept a lot of the way, and he's more comfortable back there than curled up in the passenger seat. I don't have to worry about 80 pounds of malamute jumping into my lap at 70 miles an hour either. That's a plus. The directions for exiting Route 2 to the Motel 6 were frustrating. I went back and forth several times and finally found it by accident. The directions for exiting Route 2 to the Courtyard at Marriott in Fitchburg, where the event was being held, were likewise incomplete, and rendered more confusing by the less-than-obvious signage for the venue: I drove by the access road three times without realizing that it was the turnoff I wanted. I lost so much time trying to find first the motel and then the Marriott that I seriously feared I was going to miss the trial, which promised that it would start "no earlier than 5 p.m." I finally drove into the parking lot of the conference center, up the hill from the hotel itself, at a few minutes to five. There went my best-laid plan of having an hour or so to get Travvy used to the venue -- which he's needed in the past. I was, shall we say, a little frazzled. But I managed to bring Travvy, kit bag, and wire crate (even folded-up it's big and heavy) into the cavernous conference center exhibit hall and get everything set up -- with Travvy in tow. No way could I have managed this at any of our previous outings: Trav needed both my hands and nearly all my attention. This time he was excited for sure but he was "under threshold" the great majority of the time, meaning that his brain was in gear. We maneuvered with other dogs at close and very close quarters; he reacted a few times but many times he went by and kept paying attention to me. So I was thinking that maybe we had a chance, especially after I saw that the Advanced A course didn't include the dreaded off-set figure 8, where you have to heel a figure 8 pattern around two orange cones, with two feed bowls in close proximity. The bowls usually contain food or treats, covered to be sure, but most dogs recognize a feed bowl when they see one, and covers don't conceal smell. Toys may also be used, either alone or in conjunction with food. Keep in mind that Advanced is done off-leash. Trav and I have practiced this, but we have a long, long way to go before we're anywhere close to reliable. Focus on handler is the key, I think: when Travvy focuses on me, distractions are less, well, distracting. But distractions impair focus, and at a trial, the distractions are endless: the nice judge in the ring, dogs outside the ring, dogs barking somewhere else in the hall . . . You get it. I was, therefore, mega-relieved that there was no off-set figure 8 in the course. Trav was a little drifty at the start of our run, but not as drifty as he was at Wrentham in early June. I got his attention back, and we were doing pretty well through the first dozen stations. Station 13 was Halt, Stand, Walk Around Dog -- we did that nicely too. Then Trav jumped the ring gate into the next ring. I had no idea what brought that on -- till I realized that my playful puppy had a little stuffed toy in his mouth. Uh-oh. There was no off-set figure 8 in the Advanced A course, but there was in Advanced B. Advanced B was being held in the next ring over, and two little stuffed toys were placed just the other side of the little fence. Travvy noticed; I didn't. Well, that meant an NQ for us. Fortunately no one was on course at that moment. And I still had to get the toy out of Travvy's mouth. Malamutes have the most infuriatingly adorable "I'm not gonna" look. Travvy was, as always, a credit to his breed. An official passed me a dog biscuit, I persuaded Travvy to relinquish the toy, and -- since there was no one to hand it off to -- I tossed the toy a few feet away. Naturally Travvy snatched it back as soon as he finished the cookie, and we had to repeat the process. I offered the toy to the Advanced B judge -- he declined, saying he didn't want slime on his hands. The Advanced A judge said her hands were already well slimed, so she took it. She also said, "If it makes you feel better, that's the first time that has ever happened when I was judging." I like that judge! The NQ didn't prevent Trav from being the star of the class, or at least the class clown, and several people came up to meet him afterwards, including another malamute owner. NQing was sort of disappointing, but mostly Travvy did really well today, handling the stress of being on the road and around other dogs. Since that incident after we finished the course at Wrentham, when we tripped over each other and Travvy fell into the ring gate and growled at me, I've been apprehensive that something really bad might happen: that Trav might overreact in a way that looked like, or verged on, aggression. At the end of today, I'm a lot less apprehensive than I was at the beginning. But we've got some serious training to do with stuffed toys and other temptations.
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