Traveling with Fido this summer? Ask the dog travel expert!

Somewhere in the Carolinas:
 Bonnie and Billy Ray snoring on my wife's lap. 

My wife and I make at least two round trips between Florida and Connecticut every year. While it would be cheaper and faster to fly, we drive in order to bring our elderly dachshunds, Bonnie and Billy Ray, with us.

Knowing I am an expert when it comes to traveling with dogs, dozens of readers have written to ask my advice on traveling with their own pooches during this summer vacation season.

Here are my answers to some of the most commonly asked questions.

Q: “Do I need to buy any particular type of vehicle to travel with my dogs?”

A: We bought an SUV specifically for our dogs’ comfort. Like so many neurotic small breeds, they tend to become anxious whenever they are separated from us, so we figured we would fold down the rear seat and place their bed immediately behind the front seat. However, if your dogs are like ours they will insist on sitting on the lap of the person in the front passenger seat so you might as well buy a sporty two-seater. A Mercedes SLS AMG is a good choice. If you put the top down, tie their leashes to the gear shifter so they won’t blow away and ruin your vacation.

Q: “What if my dogs are too big to sit on the passenger’s lap?”

Then you will need a vehicle with both a front seat (for the dogs) and back seat (for the second passenger).

Q: “We refuse to leave our dogs in a hot car while we go into a sit-down restaurant so we wind up eating all our road meals at McDonald’s or Arby’s. It’s tiresome. It’s unhealthy. Do you have any alternative suggestions?”

A: Burger King. For limited time this summer, original chicken sandwiches are just $1.04 each.

Q: “This is a theoretical question. What if, while you were eating your $1.04 chicken sandwiches on the patio of a Burger King, you felt sorry for your dogs, who had refused to eat all day but were acting hungry? And what if you ordered two plain hamburgers for them, remembering that Burger King burgers are flame-broiled, not fried, so you assumed the burgers couldn’t harm the dogs’ sensitive digestive systems? And what if, while you were staying at a hotel that night, one of the dogs suffered a diarrhea attack causing an odor so awful it made the other dog vomit?”

A: I have two suggestions. 1.) Travel with an Oreck steamer to remove any carpet stains. If an odor persists after steaming, try rubbing the juice from a jar of peach salsa (available at roadside stands throughout the Carolinas and Georgia) onto the steamed area and that will disguise any untoward aroma long enough for you to get into the next state. 2). If you know from experience such an unfortunate accident might occur, you can always check into the hotel under an assumed name and pay cash so your credit card won’t be hit with cleaning charges. This is a theoretical answer, of course.

Q: “Can you recommend any hotels that welcome dogs?” 

A: No, but if you will email me, I’ll tell you the name of one you should avoid.

When I wore a younger man's clothes

I’ve been culling through boxes of old clothes in the attic of the house we’re preparing to sell and stuffing them into garbage bags to take to the Salvation Army, which will probably throw most of them away.

I’ve tossed sweaters, wide-wale corduroy slacks, dress shirts, flannel shirts, polo shirts, wide ties, narrow ties, bow ties, even a suit David Letterman wore as host of Late Night on NBC in the early 80s, back when everyone assumed he would inherit Johnny Carson’s job on Tonight.

Phil’s Men’s Shop on East 48^th in Manhattan provided Late Night with suits for Letterman to wear one time -- the trouser bottoms were pinned rather than stitched -- in exchange for mention in the closing credits. Phil, the proprietor, then sold the suits to a handful of his favorite customers for half price. I must have purchased half a dozen Letterman suits over the years. This was the last of the bunch.

There are, however, two items of clothing I can’t bring myself to toss:

       1)   A pair of Brittannia patchwork bell bottom jeans.

       2)   A red hoodie that says “Wentworth Military Academy” on the front. 

The jeans came from Woody’s in Columbia, Mo., where most of the guys who belonged to fraternities at the University of Missouri bought their clothes. Woody’s clothes tended to be preppy – Gant shirts, Corbin trousers and the like – but these jeans were anything but. I wore them backpacking around Europe the summer of '72. Seems unbelievable I was ever that skinny. The waistband barely fits around my thigh these days.

The hoodie was issued the day I enrolled at Wentworth in September, 1968, for my senior year of high school. Why, you ask, did I go to military school? Because, believe it or not, I wanted to. My father had died during my freshman year and I was living with my mom. My sister landed a teaching job nearby and announced she was moving home. About the same time my brother, a career Army officer, was sent to Vietnam and his wife and three young daughters moved across the street. No 16-year-old boy, I explained to my mother, should have to live with six Dryden females. She couldn't argue with that, so off I went. 

The year I spent at Wentworth was one of the best of my life. I ran off 65 pounds (half of which I’ve managed to keep off ), learned self-discipline, and encountered the best teacher I ever had, Major John Gover, who read The Canterbury Tales aloud in the medieval English in which Chaucer had written them. Major Gover liked the way I wrote and called me into his office one day to tell me I should go to journalism school rather than return to Wentworth for junior college, as I was planning to do. I took his advice.

The hoodie still has my laundry number, D-61,written upside down in indelible marker on the front.

Someday my children or grandkids will run across those ridiculous-looking jeans and the hoodie hanging in my closet. They’ll laugh and toss them in the trash which is where they belong.

But not as long as I’m still kicking.

Hey hey Paula

The Paula Deen debacle reminds me of a joke I heard as a boy:

Jesus is preaching when he is interrupted by a throng of men dragging a woman. "Teacher," one of the men says, “this woman committed adultery. What should we do with her?"

Jesus replies, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Moments later, a little old lady pushes her way through the crowd, picks up a giant rock and hurls it at the adultress, smacking her upside the head and causing her to collapse.

Jesus sighs as he turns to the old lady. “Mother, I was trying to make a
point here.”

So am I. My point is this: There isn’t anyone screaming bloody murder about Paula Deen who hasn’t uttered a racial slur or, at the very least, laughed at a joke that belittled someone’s ethnicity or essence. You know the kind of slurs I’m referring to – wops, spics, cannucks, krauts, cheese-eating surrender monkeys, polocks, slopeheads, dotheads, towelheads, zips, nips, micks, crackers, hymies, haoles, chinks, camel-jocks, kikes, dykes, oreos, goyim and there are others this honky peckerwood gringo could list if I were so inclined but I’m not.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not condoning the word Ms. Deen allegedly used in a deposition. It’s a word that is particularly hurtful and offensive to African-Americans and, given our nation’s bitter racial history, many Americans are more sensitive to it than they are to slurs against other ethnicities. Much of the blame for the word’s continued existence can be placed on the founding fathers who, when drawing up the Constitution, could have (past tense of racial slur for a person of Japanese descent) the problem in the bud by outlawing slavery at the get-go but instead deferred the matter to be determined by future generations. The result? The bitterest, most deadly war in American history that left a divide we like to pretend no longer exists but does. If our country had truly been founded as a nation in which all people were created equal, the word would have disappeared generations ago. But ours, alas, isn’t a perfect nation. No nation is.  

Ms. Deen has gone on TV and begged for forgiveness, endless stories have been written about the incident, sponsors and the Food Network have given her a drop kick, and tens of thousands of Americans have registered their own opinions on message boards.

Here's mine. It's something I wouldn’t have said in my younger days when I was more judgmental than I am now that I realize that nobody, especially me, is perfect. Let's forgive Ms. Deen, put the story to rest and instead focus on matters more important, such as a government that’s making a mockery of our civil liberties. 

We Americans are a forgiving people. We drive Mercedes built by Germans who turned the other way as their government killed six million Jews. Not to mention Nissans and Toyotas built by people whose military bombed Pearl Harbor, staged the death march to Bataan and other atrocities. Former Congressman Anthony Wiener, who had to resign after tweeting a picture of his dick, stands a good chance of becoming New York’s next mayor. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who once belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, went on to become a revered member of the Democratic Party and U.S. Senate. We’ve forgiven Martha Stewart. We should forgive Paula Deen, too.

Unless, of course, you're without sin, in which case you are free to hurl away.

St. Joseph, the patron saint of real estate

Our Connecticut house, a rambling colonial that, according to the realtor's marketing brochure, “is sited beautifully, halfway up a rolling ridge, with a driveway that leads up through a sweeping front yard enhanced with mature trees and a brick front walk,” is on the market.

The “For Sale” sign went up three months ago. So far … zippity do dah. 

What to do? Turn to St. Joseph, the guy the Bible says was betrothed to Mary when she gave birth to Jesus. I’ve always admired Joseph because, frankly, if my fiancee had given me that story, I wouldn’t have been as magnanimous about it as he was. If anyone deserves sainthood, he does. 

I had no idea that Joseph is the patron saint of real estate until friends – Catholics, Protestants, Jews – told us that if we really want to sell, he can help. 

Specifically, they advised us to buy a statue of St. Joseph and bury it, upside-down, in the yard. This, according to experts featured in numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, and the testimonies of dozens of believers I found online, will draw buyers like ants to a picnic. There is, however, much debate about where the statue should be buried. Some say three feet from the front door. Others say in the back yard. Or in a flower bed. Or next to the “For Sale” sign. 

Seems bizarre not to mention sacrilegious but as of ten minutes ago, a made-in-China St. Joseph statue – $6.99 at a Christian Book Store –  is upside down in our yard. 

I just pray I was able to bury it deep enough in the rocky soil of Connecticut that the yard men don’t run over it with their mowers.

Stay tuned.

What my Facebook friends are up to this summer

Don’t know about your friends but, thanks to Facebook, I know how my circle of intelligent, highly-accomplished friends is spending the summer:

Chris Smith likes Purina® Cat Chow®

Mitch Hughes is reading Living with Chronic Halitosis on Goodreads

Margo Quisenberry is at the law offices of Divorce Attorney Marcus J. Sandler

Jane Alvarez joined the group Legalize the Right to Bitchslap Stupid People

Winthrop Quisenberry is at the In-And-Out Motel in Annapolis, Maryland with Catherine Morrison

Shirley Carson likes Omaha School of Mortuary Science

Leonard Jones likes LaToya Jackson’s status

Marilee Linney birthed a butterscotch disc in Candycrush Saga

Sarah Young likes Summer Entertaining with Cool Whip®

John Mohr likes Quilted Northern® bathroom tissue

John Mohr likes Metamucil®

Leo Spangler commented on Laura Jensen’s status: “Why can’t you remember where you left the baby? She’s probably awake and hungry by now"

Bill Feinberg likes the group Guns Don’t Kill People, Guns with Bullets Do

Debbie Ramsey ate an entire pan of brownies in Farmville 6

Debbie Ramsey harvested a field of Mary Jane in Farmville 5

Marjorie Grossman and 837,503 other women liked Bill Clinton

James Chapman likes Lotromin® Jock Itch Anti Fungal Spray

Suzy Leachman voted Not Sure on the poll question: Should Serial Killers be Prosecuted to the Full Extent of the Law? 

Lawrence Ellerbee shared Tom Dryden’s post What My Facebook Friends are Up to This Summer

A Father’s Day commercial I’d like to see

I laugh every time I see a Father’s Day commercial for the simple reason that the models who play the “fathers” are no more fathers than my dachshund, Billy Ray, who had his gonads surgically removed as a puppy.

A guy in a typical Father’s Day spot is a twenty-something pretty boy in swimming trunks. He has a hairless chest and washboard abs and is beaming happily as he runs out of the surf with his adopted children (one boy, one girl) and his wife. You know the kids are adopted because there’s no way the wife, who is equally delighted to be reveling in quality family time, having just flown in from Milan where she works during the week as a runway model, ever carried anything heavier in her belly than a grape -- she allows herself to eat one every other Saturday.

These commercials are hilarious. And completely unbelievable.

Here’s a script for a Father’s Day commercial I’d like to see.

Beach scene. Fortyish balding man, his hairy potbelly quivering over the waistband of his swim trunks, is emerging from the water, holding his son, who appears to be about five. The kid is bawling, screaming in pain. Camera closes in on the kid’s foot, which is bleeding.

Man thrusts kid into the arms of his wife -- imagine Kathy Bates as she looked in "Misery", wearing a one-piece swimsuit and a floppy hat -- who is sitting in a beach chair.

(Mom): What happened?

(Dad): I think he stepped on a stingray or something.

Dad leans over and opens a cooler. He removes a PBR and pops the top, spraying beer all over the kid, causing the boy to cry even harder.

(Dad): Did you bring any Band-Aids?

Dad plops into a beach chair.

(Mom, angrily): Who do you think I am, Florence Nightengale? I thought you were watching him.

(Dad): I thought you were.

Cut to close-up of mom, who is furious.

(Mom, accusingly): You were too busy drooling over that slut with fake tits.  

Cut to close-up of blood gushing from kid’s foot.

Cut to wife, realizing there’s blood all over her.

(Mom): Shit, it’s really bleeding. We have to go to the ER.

(Dad): I took him last time. Your turn. It’s Father’s Day.

Mom, holding kid who is screaming louder than ever, gets up and runs off camera. 

Dad takes a sip from his beer and winks at the camera as slut with fake tits walks into the frame and sits down in chair vacated by the wife.

Cut to box of Band Aids. Type supers over.

 BAND-AIDS 

 Pick up an extra box for Father’s Day weekend

Happy Father's Day.