The Car

 "Wanna go for a ride" 

Most dogs, when they hear this, they become charged with energy. Running around at a high rate of speed, excited to get in the car and feel the wind in their fur and ears. Nose high in the air getting all the good sniffs. 

But not my dog.  

Not Sugar Grace. 

No. Sugar does not like car rides. What Sugar likes is being around her people, and sometimes her people are with her in a car. 

Girl's conflicted here. 

Many moons ago (just over 10 now) Sugar was just a pup owned by a hunter. She was not a good hunter. Even at 8 weeks old he knew.  Ok, his loss, whatever. We grab the little Sugar Grace and we get in the car. About fifteen minutes into the drive it starts pouring rain. No worries, we're in the car. There's a sweet little puppy on my lap in the passenger seat, and we're driving the remaining time home. Then she whines. We don't know why she's whining, she already went potty, and she should be good. Then she burps. And then the flood of what I could only describe as old hamburger helper and cheese came up out of the dog onto my lap and into the crack between the center console of the car and the seat.

That will never come out. We must sell the car now. 

We stop the car, we get out, the rain is now coming down pretty hard. We clean up the best we can. Everyone is covered in vomit and soaked from the rain. We continue on. We get home and think nothing of it, maybe it was nerves, maybe they fed her nasty food, who knows. But this puppy is gonna have a good life. 

She's spoiled. She's gonna be passenger princess now. 

She was not going to be passenger princess. 

We ended up having to stop taking her on long trips. She would get so upset we'd have to put her in the back seat with a blanket and give her some drugs to make her loopy. 

Girl was HIGH. 

EVERY TIME we get in the car now she has to be seatbelted in the back seat with reassurance and a short drive only. And instead of going on trips, she goes to daycare. She's a pack dog. She loves her friends, but that creates another problem for another story... 

SEPARATION ANXIETY.