Must Love Dogs

Meet our new dog, Brady.

So regal.

Brady is the new love of my life.  Mike and I adopted Brady from the Chicagoland Lab Rescue on Superbowl Sunday.  He is half lab, half vizsla, which is pretty much my childhood in a dog because one set of my grandparents had labs and the other set had vizslas.

While having a dog is a lot of work, we both love it.  I love going on walks and exploring new parts of Chicago with the dog.  Brady could play fetch in our long apartment for hours on end, which never gets boring to watch.  And he also loves meeting new people and new dogs.

Relaxing next to Lake Michigan.

Now we have this little furball in our lives, which is great, except for when it comes to traveling.  If I could take him with me, I would, but neither one of us would be happy after an 8 hour flight.  So we came across the problem of what to do with Brady while we are gone in Europe.  Neither Mike nor I wanted to put him in a kennel for 10 days, so we turned to the internet for a solution.

Enter DogVacay, a site where people who would like to dogsit your pup post profiles and rates for their services.  We needed someone who had a car that could come pick up Brady and who had someone around the house during the day since Brady is used to Mike being around.  Not the easiest thing to find, but we came across a couple in a different part of the city who fit those qualifications and were available to watch him.  About a month ago, we took Brady on a walk up to meet them and it all went well.  So on Tuesday night, Brady will go on his own little vacation while we are on ours.  And part of DogVacay's policy is to have the sitters send you a daily picture of your pup, which is great because I know we'll miss him.

Graduating from obedience class.

Have any of you used a site like DogVacay before?  What do you do with your pets when you are gone for a long period of time?  I'd love to hear from you in the comments!