The plan for the road trip was set in motion before the puppies were born. My friend Sally said she had a dog in heat. Sally and I message each other often, usually with thoughts about dogs. She was on the fence about breeding her female, as she didn’t really plan on having a litter of puppies this year. I told her that if she bred the dog, I would take some pups. I soon received a photo of her dogs “tying,” and eight weeks later there were eight puppies.
I brought down two dogs from Alaska for mushers out east that stayed with us until I was ready to make the “puppy retrieval trip,” as I called it. I had to wait until the puppies were weaned, which put the trip at the last week of October. I could leave on a Monday morning, drive east through Canada, stop to pick up a third dog in Michigan, be at Sally’s the next afternoon, spend a night, and drive home through the lower 48. I only needed to be home in time to trick-or-treat with my daughter, Sylvia, Friday evening.
The Subaru has close to 190,000 miles on it. I spent a few weeks trying to fix some of the pesky things that would make the trip easier, such as the lifts that keep the trunk open and replacing the missing driver’s visor. Unfortunately, we had the glass replaced in the driver’s window over the summer, and the company didn’t do it right, so if you put the window down at all, the window spontaneously drops.
I had three crates. Jett and Gus were super happy to ride in their crates, and I settled into the trip with audiobooks chosen for the ride—everything from self-help to mysteries. I would drive through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and pick up one more dog, named Apple, who was hitching a ride to Sally’s kennel.
In Marquette, Dinah, Apple’s owner, said, “I didn’t know you were driving a car. Apple is very ‘vocal.’”
I had prepared myself for a loud ride with the puppies, but figured the adults would be accustomed to vehicle travel. Once we started driving, Apple began to howl—an incessant but mournful howl, as if she were trying to summon her pack at home. Fortunately for all of us, this didn’t last for more than 10 minutes. What I would learn is that she would do this every time we stopped for a break and then restarted again. When I finally pulled into a hotel for the night, gave the dogs their food and a walk, and tucked myself into a room, I could hear her howling in the car—just loud enough for me, but probably not something anyone else would hear unless they were really trying to.
The next morning, I awoke early and found, with the GPS, I was more than halfway to Sally’s. With 10 hours of driving to go, a few gas and potty stops, and possibly traffic in Ottawa and Montreal, we would be there for supper.
At Sally’s that night, we found the real howling would start. Gus didn’t like the style of house he was given for the night, and Apple just could not settle down. We brought her inside for the night and suffered her periodic outbursts of howling.
By noon the next day, I crated up three 7-week-old puppies and two more adults, and we again hit the road. Due to newish CDC regulations, one can no longer take puppies under six months of age from Canada into the U.S., so I had to travel home through the U.S., adding more hours and miles, tolls, and traffic.
I soon learned that these three pups were a generally quiet bunch, though as the trip went on, they seemed to find their voices. Perhaps three days of driving does that. I myself savored the solitude, my only stressors trying to figure out where best to stop with young puppies for puppy breaks, and how to navigate toll booths with a driver’s window that I couldn’t open—therefore having to lean my body precariously out the car door to shove credit cards in and out of machines.
As the trip went on, the puppies learned they could wrestle with each other while I drove, and sometimes I listened to them bark and howl for miles. At the same time, the car took on a terrible odor, much like a barn.
In any case, we made it home before dusk on Halloween, and I donned my Morticia outfit to pick up Sylvia, who, when she opened the car, saw me and promptly shut the door, thinking she was in the wrong one.
Now into November, we are finding our rhythm in training, doing our snow dance, and putting on miles. Having been on the go, go, go for what feels like weeks on end, I am ready to settle into the melancholy of winter, hopeful for snowflakes, and at least a few hours of quiet to reflect on the world outside my window.
