The phone never stopped ringing. By August, we were not just filled up for most of the Christmas period, we were already overbooked for two days at that time.
All that water we had received in the form of snow and then spring flooding had provided the perfect breeding ground for blackflies and mosquitos, which were out in force. No one, including the dogs, wanted to be outside, especially as it got warmer. You could drench yourself with bug spray, but they still managed to buzz around you like little imps of hell, getting in your eyes and ears. John remarked that it was the only time he was actually happy to have to wear hearing aids, as they blocked access to the gnats.
Unlike my idealised fantasies, the dogs were not always frolicking happily together. Some would stand at the gate and bark mindlessly, loudly and constantly the whole time they were out. Some would jump up on us repeatedly and rake their claws down our backs. Some would test the fence line to see if there was a way to get out of the yard. Some would dig holes, either at the fence line, or just in the soaking ground. Some would snap at any other dog that came within touching distance of them. Some would obsess over some other particular dog and try constantly to hump their chosen victim.
We put in a third and fourth yard so we could have even more finely tuned groups, and cut down on that kind of thing. But it quickly got to the point where the most popular job in the morning was cleaning up the dog runs inside, even those with poop and pee. At least that could be done in air conditioned comfort, free of swarms of bugs.
I hadn’t expected or wanted glamour, but I was uneasily aware that no visualizations could have prepared me for the reality of this life.
John did eventually finish the condos in the cat room, so finally we were done with boarding cats at the house. That didn’t mean we were done with cat problems though.
When we built the kennel, our design called for a drywalled ceiling throughout the building. At one point our contractor had asked us if he could put a drop panel ceiling in the front of the kennel. I forget what reason was articulated, but the unspoken reality was almost certainly because it was cheaper than drywall. We said yes without really thinking about it. What difference could there be after all?
We found out.
The cat room was at the front of the building. At night, when the dogs were secured in their dormitories, we let the cats out to roam freely in the foyer, the common room and the interview room. Sometimes we would give one cat the front area to roam, close the cat room door behind that cat, and give another cat free access to the whole cat room.
One morning shortly after the cat room was completed, we came in to find several ceiling panels lying on the floor in various states of ruin. After taking a few minutes to try to process what we were seeing (we were finding that there was a lot of that involved in kennel life), we realised a cat had somehow gotten into the ceiling. We weren’t sure how. Did we, unbeknownst to us, harbour a cat who could fly? Supercat maybe? A cat who could levitate? We did have several eastern varieties over the years; Siamese, Burmese, Egyptian Mau, but none of them were in residence, and anyway, as far as we knew, none of them were practicing Yogis.
Leaving for the moment the question of how she got up there, we moved on to the question of how to get her down. John fetched the step ladder. A hugely entertaining session ensued where he would listen for the cat above his head, poke up the panel he thought the cat was in and the cat would skitter across to another one, knocking several panels down on John’s head as he went.
It was like Whack-a-Mole in reverse.
John finally climbed up to the very top step – you know, the one with the big sign on it saying “Do Not Stand On This Step” – and poked his head up into the ceiling space above the panels.
He’d grab for the cat, who would leap away outside his reach. John would climb down, move the ladder and try again. Finally, a kindly fate intervened and the cat stepped on the wrong spot on a panel and came down to earth in a big hurry, taking the panel with her. I made a dive for her, but missed. She ran into the cat room. I shut the door behind her, relieved that the problem was solved.
I followed the delinquent into the cat room, intending to retrieve her and lock her back into her kitty condo. She promptly clawed her way up the side of an enclosure, bumped out another ceiling panel, and disappeared.
Awesome.
We were back where we started, but at least the mystery of how she had gotten into the ceiling in the first place was solved. When I communicated this discovery to John, he just stared at me, apparently searching for an appropriate response, and failing to find one.
The same performance was repeated with John and the ladder, but by now, John was snarling more vociferously than the cat, and starting to just rip down ceiling panels as he went. He managed to get a death hold on kitty and passed her to me, both of us getting quite badly scratched in the process. I got her back into her own cat condo this time and closed her door, bloody but unbowed.
Unfortunately, I completely forgot that there were drop ceiling panels in the condo too. Back she swarmed up the wall and into the ceiling.
I confessed my latest failure to John. Silence reigned for a minute while we both sucked our wounds and thought about the life choices that had brought us to this point. Then John swarmed back up the ladder, retrieved the cat and locked her into the interview room.
My diary entry for this episode concludes, “We’re quite discouraged.”
We still had to hand feed the orphaned kittens between chores at the kennel. By the beginning of September, they were finally weaned, could lap milk from a saucer and eat canned food.
That was a huge relief.
And finally, with the arrival of fall, the weather turned blessedly cooler. Some of the tension started to dissipate.
We were still full on the weekends that autumn, but we had retained the services of a couple of our more reliable workers for weekends. Sometimes, they even showed up.
The autumn also brought a drastic reduction in the number of dogs and cats in the kennel. By the second week of September,1999 we were down to nine or ten dogs; at one point we had three. We realised that it would only take one of us to open the kennel in the morning and get the dogs out. We took turns sleeping in. On the days we only had three dogs, we were actually able to take a whole day off each.
It’s hard to comprehend the relief. We had worked almost six straight months by then without a day off.
In April, when business had slowed down and we seemed to be facing financial ruin, I would never have believed that the day would come when we would be ecstatic to have a nearly empty kennel. I was so exhausted at this point, that I think on some deep level I wouldn’t have been totally disappointed to be told we were facing bankruptcy and wouldn’t be able to carry on.
My niece was getting married in Toronto in October. When we originally got the invitation, we had thought that the press of business in the kennel would prevent our going. At most, if we could get some of our employees to make a firm commitment to working, perhaps one of us might be able to drive down to Toronto (about six hours), attend the wedding and drive straight back. After living through the summer, we decided we needed a break if we were not to suffer a breakdown. We took the radical decision to close for a week, not only to attend the wedding, but to continue on to Disney World in Florida for some much needed R & R.
We had a great time, but the down side was that when we came back, the clocks had gone back. We got up in the dark and did the evening shift at the kennel in the dark too. By late November, rain had turned the play yards into muddy lakes again.
For the best part of the first three weeks in December, it continued rainy and overcast.
Early on, we had discovered that most of our family were either clueless about what was required by a business like ours, or felt we were deliberately using it as a lame excuse to skip family events. My family was better than John’s, maybe because when we had been growing up, my father ran a small gas bar/diner that was open seven days a week, so my brother and sister knew what it was to have your life constrained by the requirements of the family business.
For example, Christmas came and we were too tired and worn out to put up any decorations, have a Christmas dinner or even buy each other a present. We told our families that we would be working every day full out over the Christmas season and not to expect to see us.
John’s mother insisted on coming out on Christmas Eve anyway, then looked around with disdain and complained that our house was “not very festive”.
Some people couldn’t understand why we didn’t drop everything to welcome them with open arms when they dropped in with no notice just when we were scheduled to go to the kennel and start dog walking.
Some of them gave off a vibe suggesting they thought this was a little hobby that we had quirkily chosen to engage in. As one of John’s aunts snipped when I gave her our regrets that we would not be attending a New Year’s Eve party that would go into the wee hours, “Oh, I know! The dogs come first!”
Yeah, those silly dogs. They frivolously depended on us to feed them, let them outside to pee and poop, and give them some exercise, fun and emotional fulfillment. There was also the little matter of getting up in the dark before 6:00 a.m., walking dogs through the ice and snow for hours every day, feeding the cats and cleaning litter boxes; the fourteen hour days for months on end with no days off.
Not only were we open 365 days per year, ours was a business that catered to people who travel. That meant that our very busiest times were exactly the times when other people were free – summer, Christmas holidays, March Break, long weekends – in fact every weekend. Of course, these were exactly the times our families expected us to be focused elsewhere than on our business.
Fortunately, some family and friends did eventually grasp the situation and understood that we were only free during the middle of the day. They would arrange to visit with us then, or schedule their own entertainments to include us over lunch rather than dinner. As for the rest, it was a good reality check and showed how shallow the rest of those relationships were anyway.
Our Christmas present that year was that it finally froze up enough so that by December 26th, the dogs could get back into the play yards without coming inside looking like the Asaro Mudmen of Papua New Guinea.
And turning the kennel floors and walls black. Dogs, walls and floors had to be cleaned up, which took more time and more physical effort.
We reached New Year’s Eve, December 31st, 1999. We had tickets for a millennium bash in a nearby town, but when it came to it, we were too tired and too aware of our pre-dawn rising time to go. Instead we turned in around 10 p.m. and did not see the millennium arrive. However, when there were no flying cars or guys in jet packs zooming around my window the next morning, I deduced that though the calendar might say ‘2000’, the future had inexplicably failed to show up overnight.
John celebrated the arrival of the millennium on New Year’s Day by backing the car into the garage door and smashing the rear window out.
My happiness with the weather was short lived too, as by January 2nd, the temperature had risen again to zero, and there was more rain, and therefore more mud. The rain, fog, freezing rain and sleet continued to the middle of January.
One of our clients told us that they were boarding their dogs over New Year’s week because they had visitors from Australia who were allergic to animals. The visitors had chosen to come in January because they wanted to experience “an authentic Canadian winter”. Poor bastards. They got nothing but crap. Even the local ski hills were closed.
They should have come a couple of weeks later. It turned cold. Really cold. Record cold, and for the Ottawa area (second coldest capital city in the world), that’s saying something.
The actual temperatures were bad, with daily highs hovering around minus 24 at one point (minus 11 fahrenheit). The winds were worse. We had brutal, record windchills; minus 54 at one point (minus 65 fahrenheit). This rose to a balmier minus 50 the next day, when John and I did 13 walks each, twice. The walks were only about five minutes each, so the dogs’ noses, ears and pads wouldn’t freeze, but for all the dogs to have those five minutes, it meant we ourselves were out in it for a total of over an hour, three times each day.
The cold and high winds continued for the rest of the month and into February. There had been almost no snow. The soil was so dry, it was actually eroding, making what little snow there was, black with dirt. I had never seen such a phenomenon.
What with the floods the spring before and the summer forest fire, we now had the Apocalypse trifecta going. Okay. I know. You’re right. The Bible having been written by dudes in the Middle East, no killer cold or winds figured in it. But in a Canadian apocalypse, I assure you, these things would feature heavily.
On January 28, the windchill had improved. It was only minus 39 as I finished walking and started cleaning dog rooms. The water refused to go down the drain.
“Dammitall,” I thought, “This dog has managed to get another dog toy down here to plug it up.” Putting the drains inside the dogs’ rooms instead of outside their doors was one of the few mistakes we made in the kennel design. Every now and then a dog would manage to get the drain cover off and ‘bury’ a toy in the drain pipe. I mopped up as much water as I could, then got down on the wet floor and peered into the drain. I couldn’t see anything.
I finished up and then moved on to the next room. Another flood. What the *##&???
I looked up from the drain I was standing over and realized that every drain in this dog dormitory wing had standing water in it. I called John in to consult. He deduced that the septic tank had frozen. Again, what the *##&???
This would never have occurred to me in a million years. I never knew such things were even possible. I felt a moment of complete despair and was as close as I have ever been in my life to just downing tools, walking away and giving up. But here’s the thing about a kennel business. If we ran a tea room or a toy store, we could have just put up a “Closed” sign and taken off for some ‘us’ time. In a kennel, there are actual living creatures who are completely dependent on you to look after them. Whaddya gonna do?
I’ll tell you what you do. You give a big sigh, curse for a while, then you carry on as best you can.
John not only diagnosed the problem, he knew the answer. He called the septic guy to come and pump out the tank. I wouldn’t have known that was the solution. I also would not have thought it possible to pump frozen sewage, but apparently it was and you can. Live and learn.
Our newly instituted rules about open and closed times and visiting appointments were meant to take care of the client problems and they did help somewhat, but to our disappointment and surprise, a small but significant number of people ignored our new open and closed times with distressing regularity. This would become the single biggest frustration and stressor in our life.
For months now, we had been making it clear in every way we could think of, that we would expect clients to abide by our rules, which would be strictly enforced.
Our website highlighted our policies about timeliness. Our outgoing voicemail message stated our open and closed hours, and stipulated that we strictly enforced them. It specifically said that people would not be admitted, under any circumstances, outside of our regular hours, so “please be on time.” The message also told people that we did visits only by appointment, so “please do not come out to see us before speaking to us first, to make an appointment.”
To underline all this, we began sending out emails the night before a scheduled visit or boarding, with another underlined notice about our strict adherence to open and closed hours, in bold type, highlighted and in red. Before a visit or first boarding, we would include directions and a map in that email, so people couldn’t use getting lost as an excuse for being late.
Our hours were posted on the gate, which we shut and locked when the kennel was closed.
We stressed this at great length to people who visited with a view to boarding. We even made a point of specifically stating that we would understand perfectly if people chose to go elsewhere because our insistence on strict adherence to our open and closed hours posed problems for them.
“People come to us because we have a reputation for understanding kennel stress,” we would say. “A big part of that is making sure the dogs’ routine is adhered to and that they are not disturbed once they’ve had the sign that it’s going to be quiet. That’s why we make no exceptions for lateness.”
People invariably agreed; even applauded us for the fact that our rules were in place to benefit their pets. Then a small number of those happy people were somehow confused when an exception was not made for them. Then things would turn ugly.
In February the weather warmed up slightly. Then the snow came.
A prospective client came for a visit. She was given the lecture about how she had to be on time and all the reasons for that rule.
She was having a friend bring the dog in and we asked her to warn the friend that if he was not on time, we would not accept the dog for boarding. We also made it very clear that if she herself failed to arrive on time to pick the dog, she would not get her dog.
“If it seems even remotely possible that you won’t have enough time to get here before we close, then don’t come. Wait for the next open time.”
“It’s wonderful that you protect the dogs that way!” she enthusiastically agreed.
The friend duly arrived with the dog, Butch. The client even called to make sure everything all went all right, and that her friend had been on time.
Then came the night when they were supposed to pick Butch up in the evening. Instead of the client, we got a cheery phone message saying “It’s 7:30 and we’ve been delayed. We hope to make it by closing time, but we might be a minute or two late, so don’t close!”
There had been an enormous storm that day. We were coming to the end of 12 hours of coping with the storm.
The wind driven snow kept drifting over the drive-way. It had been plowed out three times, but every time it drifted in, it had to be shoveled out by hand.
We had to constantly shovel out the gates to the yards so we could get the dogs out to play. We had to walk all those dogs in cold, blowing snow and high winds through deep snow drifts on the walking path.
We were overbooked because people kept calling to say they couldn’t pick up their dog as they were snowed in at some airport.
We debated that voicemail but figured as long as it was only going to a few minutes we’d try to contain our unhappiness with these people, even though they had been specifically told that if this kind of situation arose, they were not to come late, but to come the next morning.
Closing time came and went. We got the dogs in, went and visited with each one in their room for beddie-byes and distributed biscuits. It was now a half hour past closing time, and well over an hour since our clients had left their message. The dogs were on their beds, quiet and happily prepared to go to sleep. Given the explicit warnings we had given them, we assumed these people had turned around and gone home when the time got too late. It had been a long hard day. We turned off the lights, locked the kennel, shut and locked the gate at the end of the laneway and took our weary way home.
We were just getting out of our winter things when John announced, ‘There’re lights in the driveway stopped at the gate. They’re here.”
It was now 45 minutes after closing time and the kennel was dead quiet and dead dark. We assumed they would turn around and leave. Surely no one would be crazy enough, especially after we’d had this very discussion, to think we were going to go back, unlock the kennel, turn the lights on and wake up 30 dogs who would immediately start barking like mad, just so these first time clients could pick up their dog.
Again – they had been specifically told we wouldn’t do it. In fact they had been told multiple times and by every way, shape and form of communication known to man and technology.
Nope. They somehow got themselves over or around the gate, came to the house and knocked on the door.
I opened it to see bright and smiling faces.
“Hi!” twittered Mrs. Latecomer. “We’re here for our dog?”
I should have mentioned that she was one of those preternaturally perky little women who chirp everything in a high, little girl, singsong upspeak voice that made my teeth ache.
She took a good look at my face. Suddenly there was a noticeable drop in the perkiness quotient on our front porch.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said flatly.
The response to this was a bewildered and hurt look.
“Didn’t you get our message?”
“Yes, and didn’t we have this very discussion?” I asked.
Her face crumpled and she didn’t reply, leaving it to Big, Manly Husband to explain to me that, if I hadn’t noticed, there was a storm and roads were bad.
He launched into an impassioned description of the terrible day they’d had.
“Yup, uh huh, sure, roger that,” I agreed. “We did indeed notice the storm, what with us having spent the last twelve hours digging out paths, roads and gates and walking dogs through a blizzard.
“Am I wrong,” I went on, “Or wouldn’t the fact that roads are bad actually have been a reason to either start earlier or leave the pick up til tomorrow?
“Just refresh my memory,” I continued, picking up steam, “Didn’t we use that exact example when we discussed our strict enforcement of hours? Because – hands up [I shot mine into the air] – those of us who remember specifically talking about snowstorms possibly delaying your travel. Didn’t we tell you more than once, that if it looked like you were going to be late, not to come. To wait until the next open time?”
It’s remotely possible that my voice may have risen somewhat during this speech.
Mrs. Latecomer’s response to this was to break into tears.
“It never occurred to me it would apply in this situation,” she sobbed.
“By ‘this situation’ I guess you mean – TO YOU,” I snarled.
I got a grip on myself and returned to the main issue.
“It’s an academic discussion,” I went on more calmly. “I told you in very clear terms that I know you understood, that we strictly enforce our hours. The kennel is dark. The dogs are asleep. We are not going over to disturb them and make yet more work for ourselves at the end of an extremely long day, because you can’t accept that the rules apply to you. We’ll see you in the morning.”
I then started to shut the door. Big Manly Husband violently shot his arm out against the door to prevent me closing it, spluttering and expostulating, and pushing me back a step in the process.
John arrived on the scene just in time to witness Big Manly Husband’s physical display. He charged over, doing his patented wildman glare, telling them to leave. The testosterone level immediately went way up, as Big Manly started castigating John. I put myself in between John and Big Manly and tried again to close the door.
As I was doing this, Mrs. Latecomer screamed, “Oh, Darling Asshole Husband of Mine [okay, that might not have been his real name], I’m scared to leave Butch here now! I’m sure HE’S going to abuse him!!”
At this, John renewed his efforts to get past me, prepared to relieve his feelings by tearing someone’s head off their shoulders. I think he was actually growling by that point. I blocked him again.
“If you’re wise, you will leave now,” I advised. I pushed John into the house with me, then finally managed to shut and lock the door in their faces.
The next day they showed up at 8:00 a.m. sharp to get their dog. John happened to be on front desk duty when they arrived. As he recounted the story to me later, he made an effort to be extremely polite and friendly to them, both when they arrived and when he brought Butch out after they paid the bill. They refused to speak to or even look at him through all those proceedings.
When John consigned Butch to them, they made a big show of ostentatiously checking the dog all over, clearing demonstrating to John that they were convinced their fears of abuse had come to pass.
Luckily we always used a rubber hose when we beat the dogs, so nothing would show.
Things descended into farce when another client came in carrying a little Pomeranian who had been with us a lot. Of course, Suzi jumped right out of Harvey’s arms into John’s arms. Harvey turned to Mr. And Mrs. Latecomer, who were still checking their dog for broken bones, and started waxing lyrical about how Suzi just loved it here – more than at home, she always got all excited as soon as they turned down our road, and on and on.
All the while Suzi was licking John’s face like she had met the god of dogdom and wanted to show how much she worshipped him. John meanwhile, was killing himself trying not to crack up.
Mr. And Mrs. Latecomer finally went out to the parking lot just as I happened along with the dogs I was walking.
“I want to thank YOU for YOUR care of our dog, “ Big Manly Husband announced to me with pointed emphasis, ignoring John, who had come out to watch the show, still holding the ever adoring Suzi.
I walked on by and replied without a pause, “And thank YOU so much for your allegation of dog abuse. It really made the end of a long hard day so much better.”
I heard John say, “It’s too bad really, because Butch liked it here and we liked him.” I stopped to see what would happen.
Big Manly gave John the cut direct, turning his back on him without a word, getting into his car and driving off. Somehow, it had all become John’s fault and really, he did nothing except tell them to leave, and look at them like he was ready to eat them alive. It was me who had given them a spanking.
We were just starting to recover our equanimity when a client called us after they took their dog home from his first boarding, to tell us their dog had a runny eye and perhaps we’d like to clean our kennel a little better in future.
***We had pretty much forgotten about our offer of a free night’s boarding made by voucher at the Ottawa Kennel Club dog show way back in November of 1998. Now, over a year later, we had a call from someone who said he had picked up our voucher at the show. Problem was, he wanted to board not one, not two, but three dogs; all for free. He only wanted the one night – that would be the free one – and during a busy period.
He told us all this in the course of a visit. He had not called in advance to schedule the visit. When he arrived, the gate was closed and padlocked. No problem.
He just lifted up the chain and lock, slipped it over the post, opened the gate and drove in, leaving the gate open behind him.
John gave him a chilly reception. It only got chillier when he produced his voucher and proposed that we should board his three dogs for free.
John told him the free night would only cover one dog. He was indignant. He wasn’t trying to get something for nothing; after all, it was our offer and it didn’t have an expiry date or a limit on the number of dogs to be boarded. John’s response was, “So sue me.”
He made the one night booking, on the basis that one dog would get free boarding, but he would pay for the other two. I was privy to some of the conversation and had the strong feeling that now there was a cost involved, he was going to be a no show on the busy weekend he had booked.
I called him the next day and told him we had made a mistake in our book, and couldn’t take his dogs at that particular time. It was obvious from what followed that he had had no intention of bringing the dogs anyway. He treated me to a long whine about how John was cold to him, and treated him as if he had broken in. I pointed out, that technically, in fact he had broken in.
He was shocked at my attitude. Didn’t we know that in the country, it was quite the acceptable thing to work a locked chain up over the post and walk right in, leaving the gate open behind you? I informed him that I had been raised in the country, and in fact it was quite the opposite. A locked gate generally signified animals loose in the field or enclosure beyond. In any event, you should never leave a gate open that you found closed. I forced him to admit that John had in fact been scrupulously polite and business-like, but he still maintained that John had been ‘cold’, even if professional, and he hadn’t been treated well.
We bore up under the disappointment.
One afternoon, I deliberately went over to the kennel fifteen minutes early. We had three small dogs, two of them puppies, who were on their first boarding. I had tried to walk them when they came in and found it almost impossible. The puppies had clearly never been taught to walk on lead, and all three kept getting tangled up together. I reasoned that I would get there before any clients showed up, and try to teach them to walk on lead, this time without the distractions provided by comings and goings of cars and people, or by other dogs being walked.
Of course, a client showed up forty minutes early, parked right across the front door, got out and proceeded to parade up and down beside the outside dog runs with her dog, setting every dog who was enjoying access to the outside to crazily barking and lunging at their fences. This all happened just as I was coming around the corner with my three little dogs, who I had naively hoped to walk without complicating factors. My three dogs panicked, twining their leads around each other and me, resulting in one of them being in imminent danger of choking. I picked up all three and hobbled back into the kennel, where I spent some time disentangling us and calming the little guys down.
When I went to the front of the kennel, the client was waiting for me at the counter. She was in tears. She accused John of having spoken harshly to her. He had had the unparalleled cruelty to tell her to move her car, which she had left blocking the front door.
I pointed out that she was early. I pointed out that she had parked right in front of the door instead of in a parking place, blocking access to other clients who were expected. I pointed out that she had chosen to walk her dog in front of the dog runs, causing a lot of noise and upset for the other dogs. I pointed out that I had come over early so that I could walk my problem dogs without complications and instead had run smack into her and her dog.
Her response to these charges? “I didn’t intend to get out of the car, just wait there.”
I stared at her, considering and discarding various responses, as this young woman had boarded her dog with us before, and I liked both her and the dog. I went for pointing out the obvious.
“But you did get out. With your dog. And you could see and hear as well as we could, the effect that had on the other dogs. Plus you’re early. And parking in an actual parking space is usually considered polite.”
“Well, if you don’t want people coming in early, you should lock your gate,” she riposted with the air of one producing an unanswerable argument.
I sighed heavily and told her we had given up on locking the gate, as it didn’t seem to deter anyone.
Not satisfied, she took her dog and left in high dudgeon, another client abandoning their booking because we had been so unpardonably rude as to point out that the facts were on our side.
Years later, she came back with this dog, now elderly, plus a new dog. These two boarded happily with us for many years after that. The previous history was never mentioned by anyone.
One lady with a springer spaniel arrived about two hours early and knocked at the door of the house. We pointed out that this was our house not the kennel, that she was way early and told her to go away and come back at the posted time.
She then came back an hour before opening and again went to the house instead of the kennel.
She did this notwithstanding that by then we actually had a sign up where the driveway to the kennel split off from the driveway to the house, saying “Kennels” with a big arrow pointing the right way.
We were at the kennel when she arrived early for the second time. Seeing her at the house, John went out to yell and gesticulate at her to come over to the kennel. When she drove over, John told her she was still way too early, but could wait in her car in the kennel parking lot, while we did our dog walks.
When I went out with my dogs on my first walk, I noticed that the door of the house was standing wide open. The early arriving client had obviously gone right into the house and having found no one at home, departed, leaving the door open for our (then) indoor only cats, to come out as they pleased.
As I ran past her car with my dogs in tow, I lost it. I screamed at her that she had not only entered our house uninvited, she didn’t have the courtesy to close the door behind her and the cats who were not supposed to be outside.
As I approached the house with my dogs, I saw three of those five cats on the porch. Felix was throwing himself at the stone wall trying to get in the side porch door, which was still closed. I heard a bleating noise behind me and turned around to see that the client had followed me. She was wringing her hands and repeating “I’m so sorry; is there anything I can do?”
I guess my glare and hostile body language said it all, because she started crying when I thrust my dog leads into her hand and told her to hold on to them while I went to try to round up the cats. She said, through her sobs and over the noise of Felix yowling and thumping into the stone wall, that perhaps she should make another arrangement for her dog. With a look that would have blistered ice, I agreed that this would be best. She left in tears.
I did feel badly later about being so hard on her. I still cringe when I think about my overreaction. But I was so tired it made it almost impossible for me to hold on to my temper. Granted, this woman displayed idiocy on a truly epic scale.
Still, perhaps my inability to display any degree of patience, let alone kindness, should have been a warning sign.
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