Michigan Trip, Day 6

19 August 2013

Our last Michigan day was another long one. Mom and I got up early to walk Kaline and do some errands. I ran him behind the hotel to take the edge off a bit. We walked from South U. across the Diag again in beautiful weather to State St. On the way back to the car we stopped at Ray's Red Hots, formerly Red Hot Lovers (a much better name in my opinion), so I could get a delicious red hot and waffle fries. Delicious. Kay again did great momentum pull.

Morning walk, stopping at my favorite restaurant, Charley's.

We got a courtesy driver to the airport (yay Hertz!) so we didn't have to do luggage unloading twice. There was really no line at security. Kaline got my hoodie off, refused the first shoe retrieve, then did the second one. Progress. He was the best yet at his pat-down, holding his stand very nicely. We really lucked out getting all dog-lovers on the pat-downs.

We went to Max and Erma's for a bite and Kay settled perfectly. When we boarded the plane he was fine, but he started to tremble when I sent him into our row. He stopped, then started again during takeoff. He sat up and all three of us were stroking him and making soothing sounds. As soon as we started cruising, he relaxed and went to sleep for most of the flight. Huge improvement! This one flight attendant kept coming by to just check on how Kaline was doing, how sweet. He did fine on the landing and did mostly nice, sometimes too hard, pulling through the airport. Super antsy on the car ride home, but I couldn't blame him. He went from being cooped up five hours in a plane to being really cooped up in the car.

Kay on the plane home.

When we got home, I was the first one to go in. Hendrik had dropped Juno off earlier, and her welcome home greetings are the best! She jumped, she wagged, she kissed, she leaned, she even whimpered in glee. I kissed and hugged and rubbed and made squeaky sounds. Brilliant. When I released her to go outside, she raced to Dad and “attacked”; then she realized Mom was in the back seat of my car and jumped into the cargo area, trying to vault into the back seat. She was not terribly thrilled to find Kaline in the back seat. “I thought you got rid of him!”

To wrap up, Kaline exceeded my expectations for this trip. I asked a lot of him, and he was fantastic. I am super proud of him, and especially glad that both my parents noticed and acknowledged how well he did. And to put the cherry on top: I finally wore Mom down, and Juno will be coming with me to Michigan in October! I cannot wait.