Outnumbered: Dash's First Road Trip

In order to go up to Canada with Thomas' mom and sister we had to drive their home in Metro-Detroit. Rather conveniently, my parents only live about 45 minutes away from them, so they very graciously babysat all 3 of our furry children. Lenny and Waldo have made the trip back to Michigan many times and love visiting Grandma, Grandpa and their dog Keira. They're also both great at riding in the car. Dash likes going for car rides around town, so we were optimistic and he would fare well on the 5-6 hour drive.

Once we got started Dash looked out the window for a while and eventually laid down. He actually had the most legroom out of anyone in the car. He got the entire trunk area to himself while the cats and luggage were in the backseat and I had my purse and snacks for us in the front while Thomas drove. Every once in a while Dash would pop his head up over the seat as if to ask "are we there yet?" and when he realized the answer was no he would just slowly sink back down.

Dash with his ear flipped inside out

looking out a different window

Lenny and Waldo hanging out in their carrier

(look really closely behind Lenny's right ear and you can see the top of Waldo's head)

Dash is usually well behaved for us and is pretty well trained, but he still has his naughty moments, so while we knew that he would be well cared for by my parents we were just a little worried that Dash might be a bit of a handful.

When we got back from Canada a week later I sat down at the kitchen table to have a snack and saw this:

Let's take a closer look at that lovely picture of Dash on the side of the fridge, shall we?

My parents' phone number was listed below!

My dad said they tried to get rid of him but no one would talk him even though he was free! No worries, though, that's just my dad's sense of humor and the sign made me laugh.

While we were gone my parents came up with some pretty ingenious ways to keep all of the animals comfortable.

The cats (espeically Waldo) don't like it when Dash comes barging into their room. To make sure that the cats would always have access to my bedroom but Dash wouldn't be able to bother them, my parents tied a wire from my doorknob to my brother's and then placed a large can in between the door and the doorframe. This ensured that the door couldn't open wide enough for Dash to get through but that it wouldn't get closed by accident either.

Keira needs some alone time when all of our critters invade her home, so my parents put two kitchen chairs at the base of the steps to keep Dash from going upstairs. Unfortunately this fix only worked for about 2-3 days before he figured out how to push the chairs out of the way, but by then Keira wasn't minding him as much so it worked out alright.