We always take a week off and run away to a warm place in December. The thought of enduring sub zero temps for another 2 months or more pushes us to seek warmer climes. In 2021,we are all under a lot of stress – the hubby is under crazy duress at the work front, the son (now 15 yrs) is buried in high school academics and extra curricular activities and I, a home maker, am going bat crazy trying to train our new puppy – Bagheera the Scottie (Buggy). In the midst of all this drama, we plan this spur of the moment vacation to Florida. Sid books a pet friendly VRBO home with a pool and a nice view of the canal. It is decided we will leave on the 23rd of December 2021 and drive 18 straight hours to Bradenton, Florida.

On the 20th of December , we kind of reconsider. Not the entire vacay, but our plan to drive non-stop. Will it be such a great idea driving all the way with a puppy, who is barely house trained? Well, he is somewhat house broken. I say somewhat cos he does not do stuff in the house. He does his business in the garage. Chicago, in December, is so cold that we cannot take him out in the yard often enough and keep him there long enough. But the garage is doable. So that is that. My most important concern is how will Bagheera do his business. I know I know if he has to do it he will.

Change of plans. We now leave on December 22nd (instead of the 23rd). The son finishes his final exam by 12 noon and the plan is to start driving by 1 pm and do 7 hours to Nashville to spend the night there. We will have to drive 10 hours the next day to get to Bradenton from Nashville. Easy Peasy…right????….WRONG!!!!! We do not anticipate crazy traffic. And boy, is it crazy. It takes us 10 hours to reach Nashville. We are all tired by the end of it. I am particularly stressed. The reason, you ask???? The puppy refuses to do his business, no matter how hard we try. We make multiple stops. Try taking him on the grass, on concrete with pee pads, Walk him, run him, try calming him….nothing works. This little, barely four month old devil, simply refuses to pee or poop the entire day. By the time we reach our hotel, it is dark, we are exhausted and the puppy is holding his pee still. We scramble to get stuff out of the car which includes our overnight bag, and stuff for the two doggies. I carry Bagheera (we are afraid he can pee at any moment) while Fitch (our older dog and a pro-traveler) walks briskly alongside. I am so tired that my hands and shoulders feel like jelly after a short while carrying Buggy. “Nothing will happen if I put him down in the elevator”, I think to myself. And then I do the deed. I put Buggy down in the elevator in-spite of my son and hubby repeatedly telling me not to. To my utter dismay, Buggy goes….and boy does he go. He lets out all the stored up pee. You’ll can imagine the embarrassing situation we are in. The consequence – I get huge lectures from the son and the hubs about how not to put a puppy down when he hasn’t gone an entire day in a clean elevator. :0)

Thankfully it is just us in the elevator when Buggy does the blasphemous deed. We retrieve copious amounts of paper towels from our room. (The suite has a mini-kitchen) and run back to the elevator and clean it up. The fact that I had the presence of mind of carrying cleaning supplies goes totally unnoticed and unappreciated by husband and son who still blame me for the situation 😦

The last thought on my mind while my over exhausted self drifts off to sleep is that we have 10 hours of driving the next day. It will certainly be more than 10 going by the traffic situation. What will Buggy do? How will he pee? Oh Lord, Help me!

I sleep pretty fitfully throughout the night. Anxiety?!?! The sound of the heat turning off every now and then doesn’t help either. It’s amazing how different sounds can mess with your sleep (let’s not even get into how uncomfortable mattresses and pillows in hotels can be). Thus, the day begins early. Very early…like at 5 am. The dogs need to go. Bagheera has figured the pee pads and goes (phew!!). Fitch needs to be taken out. Eleven floors down, in the dark, at 5 am. And soon, we are packed, and ready to leave. The journey towards our final destination begins.

We have been getting traffic snarls intermittently but have been chugging along none-the-less. The dogs and teenager have been extremely cooperative. The teenager and hubby have been listening to an audio book (Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation series). The dogs and I have no interest in science fiction and are dozing off most of the time. All seems to be well in the Dhar car, the only problem is Bagheera hasn’t gone to the bathroom since we have started at 6 am in the morning. I cannot voice my concerns lest the hubs and son blame it on my anxiety issues and OCD. When it is over six hours and the pup hasn’t pee’d – i cannot control myself any longer. The hubs takes heed and stops at the next rest stop…we try to take the dogs out and walk them. We try grass, concrete, road – nothing! We make sounds (shhhhhhhh…. At the cost of passers-by giving us strange looks), give him treats – still nothing. We’ve wasted precious 20 minutes. We cannot waste any more time. The journey continues.

It is now 10 hours. We are desperate. We have encountered another traffic jam (never travel by road on December 23rd). The husband is in a foul mood. The teenager is hungry. We take an exit to Chik-fil-a. Even the exit is backed up. It takes us more than 10 minutes to just get into the strip mall housing Chik-fil-a and finding a parking space. By this time, the hubs is ready to crashIt is becoming crazier every minute cos we see a sea of people at the drive through line. Change of plans – no drive thru – Sid goes in to get our food while Dyaus and I stay back with the dogs. Our main goal – to make Buggy go.

Something strikes me all of a sudden. I remember that Bagheera always does his business under the dining table at home. If we manage to replicate it here, he might just go. We put down some pee pads under the tables at the Chick-fil-a outdoor seating area. We put Bagheera down. And….voila….he GOES!!!! After 10 hours my little devil decides to go to the bathroom in front of at least a 100 Chick-fil-a customers. Both Dyaus and I scream inadvertently with joy. Sid comes out of the restaurant thinking someone is hurt but is pleasantly surprised to see the soiled pee pad and an accomplished looking little pup. We do get some dirty looks from the people around but we really don’t care. Our mission has been accomplished.

This is certainly not the end of our troubles though. We enter the state of Florida only to find out that I-75 is totally backed up due to a multi-vehicle crash. The Dhar party is forced to take small inside roads which causes further delays. To my amazement, both dogs and the teenager do great in spite of the delay.N ot a peep from either one of them till we reach our Airbnb which is close to midnight. But we all do reach in one piece without any more mishaps. As they say…All’s well…

For more travel memoirs click on the links below:-

Our second time in Cancun

Colorado Calling

Heavenly Hawaii