Dog Friendly

I spent 2 hours this morning finishing what I should have finished when I first started making plane/hotel reservations back in August.    I spent a  couple of hours then and did a lot, patted myself on the back and took a break.   My break lasted until this morning.

We're driving to Arkansas, Fayetteville, to be specific, to see the Tigers swim.   I love that 8 hours is shorter than 12 or 13, but it's still a long long way to go.
One lesson learned from taking the doggies on a road trip would be,  forget spending extra dollars on a bigger ride and take the Yaris.   Both dogs spent the entire trip jockeying for the middle ride between the parents and of course the big girl won every time.    I pulled Stevie out of the gear shifter a lot because he never gave up trying to claim that spot for his own.

So...in the world of "dog friendly" hotels in small town Arkansas you can choose between Econolodge yep...just the name is scary or La Quinta (our standard go to for clean dog friendly sleep) and the high point was Embassy Suites in Hot Springs but then they charged a 35.00 pet fee per night.   Eases the mind a bit when you know that they are sleeping with mom and dad instead of at  the cement floor  kennel  full of strange barking pups who might have a contagious thing.  And now I sound ridiculous.
Anyway...Best Western and Springhill Suites seems to be what we're left with on this trip.     They are in the cities halfway and our final destination.   I  like that when the leader of this pack takes me away by myself, he let's me pick pretty much any place I want.    We've stayed in some beautiful inns, resorts and B&B's.  But not so  when you travel with the dogs.    The choices are always very limited and if you are traveling through more rural type communities the choices are fewer.     This trip we're even going to try and pass Mattie off as a "small dog".    If these people only knew.   She is a gem.   She is perfect.   She might be a tad larger than "small dog", but she has the manners so that no one would even care.   She is angelic.     I'll let you know how it all goes.   BTW it was our leader who declared almost a year ago this October, "I'll never leave "my girl" in one of those places ever again."   He happened to be the one who had to take and pick up the old pugs and our 1 month new Mattie girl to the Dog Resort where they had reservations for 3 days.      We were taking our first trip away to MO to see the college girl swim.  He didn't like it one bit...she (mattie)  didn't like it one bit...and we're not one bit closer to ever going back.


 I booked my plane ride for December to see our Tiger girl swim minus the dogs and dad, booked college girl's rides in the sky for the remaining holidays and learned a valuable lesson.
If you create a folder titled Missouri in your email box..you should go ahead and put those Missouri email in it and then you will always have the information you need.      I let them stay in the email box that filled to a number in the thousand or so range, frustration was high, so I hit delete.    I'll be paying for that mistake for a bit to  come.