Friday morning, I had a mishap as I hunted for the correct location of the boarding place for Beta. (Claire and I can’t bring her to Sudbury, because my dad gets an allergic reaction to her, and we can’t put her outside all night.) She was in the back seat, doing the nervous whiny thing that dogs do when they’re in cars. My phone exchange with the dog boarding lady had gone something like this:

“Take a left from X street on to Y street, and then take the first right. You’ll see a gold car and a blue van, that’s us.”

“Is there a sign?” I replied.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

Fast forward to Beta whining in the back seat as I find myself in a parking lot between a motorcycle repair shop and an auto body repair shop, filled with cars and vans of all colours. There’s a row of nondescript residential garages in the alleyway behind the parking lot. There is no sign. As I backed out of this tight alleyway so I could look elsewhere, I heard a sound like gravel makes when you drive over it. It took me a second to realize this lot was paved and there was no way I should be hearing such a… OH MY GOD. I craned my neck to get a different angle view into my rear view mirror and realized I’d backed up against this 2-foot-tall steel post with a chain wrapped around it. I maneuvered around it and got out of the car for a closer look. Beta whined louder and began to pace, thinking I was going to let her out.

The little post had made a large gouge on the bumper panel behind my back wheel, and had popped the marker light out of its hole. I popped the light back in (it hadn’t actually broken) but my pristine silver paint now had an ugly black 12″ scratch , and the “sporty” fender extension behind the wheel didn’t fit right anymore. The damage is purely cosmetic, but since I’m trying to get out of my lease now, I’m probably going to have to get it fixed to have any hope of someone taking it off my hands. Arghhh.

I got back in the car and ended up having to war-drive with my laptop so I could look up website to find the phone number to call for better directions. This took about another half hour, and I was late for work.

“Beta, SHUT UP!!!!”

To add insult to injury, it turns out I had been in the right place after all. The lady apparently had forgotten that she’d had to take her sign down because it didn’t hold up in wet weather.

This dog boarding business is a story in itself. The lady sounded friendly and competent over the phone (except for that sign thing, apparently). My impression of her business went down from there, so she’ll remain nameless to protect the benefit of the doubt. And Beta, for that matter, since she’s there until we get back to Toronto later today.

She greeted Beta and I outside, and showed me through her yard to her back door. I squeezed past her burly partner/colleague/boyfriend(?) on the way in. Their website says they have security experience, and my guess is it’s somewhere on his resume. She brought me downstairs to the “meeting place” where she introduces her own dogs to new arrivals. It’s neutral ground, supposedly. It was tidy, but it smelled strongly of cat litter box. Beta sniffed around, shivering. I spotted a pistol-style crossbow on the coffee table and shivered once myself.

The lady introduced me to her co-worker/significant other and told me he was an obedience trainer. She showed me her well-stocked pet food store room. She had Beta’s regular food in single serving packets. I began to feel a bit better.

They brought each of two dogs down to meet Beta. Each took turns snarling at her. At one point, the “obedience trainer” told their overweight 6-year-old retriever to sit. Twice. The commands went ignored and unenforced. Uh-oh.

Beta being Beta, though, was nonplussed by her less-than-warm welcome. She was probably thinking, “Oh goodie, it’ll be easy getting these guys to chase me! Wait ’til they see how fast I can run circles around their mangy asses.”

She made no noise when I left, probably because she was distracted by one of the cats at the time.

Now, I’m not usually one to ignore my instincts, and I wasn’t really getting the warm fuzzies about this place, as you may have gleaned. I felt guilty about leaving her there, but we were short of options. The lady did seem to know what she was talking about, but she didn’t have me sign anything or ask to see proof of Beta’s shots. She did ask, though. And she got an emergency number to contact us. She even followed up later that day with a reassuring phone call. She told me how well Beta was getting along with her new friends.

I’m looking forward to picking her up later today. I hope she’s OK. If anything at all is wrong with her, I’ll have to reconsider my ability to raise a child.