The dog factor

I like to think of myself as a friendly, if somewhat reserved, person. When a complete stranger initiates a conversation with me I’m happy to talk. From time to time I’ll even be the one to talk first. I almost always smile or nod as I pass someone on the street, but most of the time I keep to myself and practice my favorite hobby, observing everyone around me. However, I’ve discovered that traveling with dogs makes this completely impossible. Instead, we are the ones under observation. All the time.

Everywhere we go people talk to us. What are their names? Can I pet them? What kind of dogs are they? They’re so cute! You get the idea. It’s only if our journey comes up that we suddenly become more interesting than the dogs. Ok, maybe not more interesting. As interesting. Then, they ask us a lot of questions about our trip. Where are you headed? Where do you come from? Where are you going next? I have to admit, it’s not the way I normally roll, but it is kind of fun.

Now, throw a cat in a backpack into the mix and watch out. This takes your traveling spectacle to a whole new level of entertainment. Look, there’s a cat in there!

Trust me on this, if you ever want to meet new people, don’t go to a bar or a club. Go out to eat BBQ with two dogs and a cat in a backpack and see what happens. One of these days someone is going to ask us for an autograph. We are rock stars! Or maybe Mr. C and I are more like the rock stars’ managers. Barnaby, Watson and Jasper are the ones people are actually paying to see.