Lodging With a Barker

This past Saturday was Moving Day NC Triangle – an annual Parkinson’s charity fundraising event in Raleigh. As usual, I added another east Carolina activity to make the trip that much more worthwhile. But unlike previous years, I now have Bear. When we’re at home, Bear is a serious barker. Any human or dog that walks by the house gets a good talking-to. But when I take him to dog parks, stores, friends’ homes, etc., he doesn’t have these barking fits. In other words, Bear seems to be barking to defend his “den”. This has led me to wonder…would Bear consider a hotel room to be his den? I certainly can’t take him to a hotel or an RV park if he’s going to launch into a tirade every time some one walks by. So for this trip, I went the Airbnb route, and found us a cottage in Carolina Beach.

On the night we arrived, Bear seemed quite agitated and confused. In fact, I may have gotten more sleep than he did overnight, as he was still fidgeting and whimpering as I fell asleep. I slept better than expected, but still woke up at 3 AM after five hours of sleep. I turned on the TV and started watching nature shows, and eventually got a little more sleep on the couch (and more importantly, came to realize that sometimes when I feel half asleep, I’m actually asleep). By 8:30 AM, Bear was looking out the front window, barking at passersby as if he owned the place. So, yeah. No hotels for Bear.

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