After my twins were first born, Tim and I didn’t travel anywhere for a year-and-a-half. Purely for reasons of sanity. Mostly mine. But then we figured out how to travel with kids, and it got easier. Now, it’s really easy. Nine year olds travel really well. Better than 47 year adults, it seems.

But six months ago, we adopted Pace, our lovable Irish Coated Wheaten Terrier. He and the family are inseperable. He is hardly ever out of the presence of one of us, and Tim and I always fret or start changing plans if it means leaving Pace at home in his crate for more than three hours.

So, how the heck are we going to take a vacation this summer?

Typically, we go to either Pennsylvania or California for a week or more in the summer to visit family. Our families live so far away from us that they hardly ever see the kids. Vacations for us are times to catch up with family, not travel to interesting or exotic destinations. In other words, they’re not really optional.

We could take the pooch, of course, but that costs money and it takes a lot of the flexibility out of travel. Plus there is the possibility of him getting lost in the luggage on the flight over, or lost if the people we stay with accidentally let him out. Or… (read: endless number of nightmare situations).

We could leave him at a doggie hotel, but he was a rescue pooch when he came to us not even a year ago, and I worry that he’ll languish in sadness for the whole time we’re gone, convinced that he’s been abandoned once again. We don’t have any trusted friends who we could leave him with (those trusted friends we have aren’t able to watch our dog, and those friends we have who will watch our dog, aren’t necessarily trusted).

I can’t believe I’m fretting this much over taking a vacation without pooch.