Owner Guilt and Separation Anxiety

Warning: Not interesting unless you care about my dog or own a pet and are psycho over them.

I'm going to Minneapolis this weekend, so I asked Nate to watch Audrey. At first he said yes then found out he has to play a show in Madison on Friday night, so I asked Natalie and Matt if she could come hang with their beagles for the weekend. They said yes and all was set. However, a family emergency arose and they will now be out of town for the weekend. Totally understandable, so today I spent most of the day fretting over what to do with Lil A. None of my friends I emailed said they could take her for Friday night/Saturday afternoon until Nate gets back to rescue her. I really detest putting her in any sort of boarding situation, no matter how fancy the kennel. She's already been through two different shelters, and I hate traumatizing her by throwing her in another scary strange environment.

I came to the conclusion that my best option was to have the dog walker come a few times on Friday and once on Saturday morning to let her out and feed her. Sure she'll be alone for a whole day, but she'll be in her own environment which I think is way better than being in a cage and catching kennel cough. Then when Nate returns on Saturday afternoon he can shower her with affection and exercise her until she collapses to make up for the time I'm away. After I made this decision I got way less stressed out about leaving her. Again, my dog walking company is the absolute best of all time.

Tonight I played 30 minutes of tug of war with her then later we did 30 of fetch with the stuffed squeaky squirrel. I wanted to give her lots of undivided attention to make up for this weekend. She's now nestled nicely against me wiped out.

I know that most non-dog owners would say that I'm doing all this out of my own guilt for leaving my dog and I'm anthropomorphizing but damn if Audrey and I don't have the most awesome connection. Only another pet owner could understand how madly in love I am with my dog, and how she thinks I'm the best dudette ever, and how that unconditional love is so insanely rad.