Separation Anxiety

Took a Blog-Break this past week so that we could take our long awaited summer vacation (without Charlie - boohoohoo.)   

The trip was a week long visit with Tim's grandparents in central Florida.   Unfortunately, Tropical Storm Fay had the same itinerary and spent 5 days hammering my in-laws' town with heavy rain and wind.   Nevertheless, it was a great treat to spend some time with family and to let Tim enjoy the pampering that only grandparents can provide.

Ordinarily, Tim can't smile enough when he's with "Grappa & Gramma" but this trip we noticed that whenever someone mentioned Charlie, Tim would begin asking for him over and over and then say "I'm sad."  The funniest was when he found some pictures of himself with Charlie and he kept looking at them and talking about them.  

Many people have asked why we didn't take Charlie with us on the trip.  While he is a service dog, he is still "in training" which means that technically he doesn't enjoy the unfettered public access of a fully trained and certified service animal.  In fact, as an assistance dog in training we must rely upon the willingness of proprietors to permit us access to public places.  Fortunately, folks have been very kind about Charlie's presence and we've not had anyone ask us to remove Charlie from their property.  (I should note here that I consider ourselves to be extremely polite dog owners and we simply don't take Charlie places where we feel there might be any threat of bad behavior that could potentially disturb other patrons or disrupt business operations.)

I do believe that absence can make the heart grow fonder and when we finally escaped the clutches of Fay and made it back home, the reunion between dog and boy was sickeningly sweet.  Tim smiled from ear to ear and Charlie wouldn't leave any of us alone.    It was like he just wanted all of us to be together again.