It has to be said from the outset that I’m a ‘love me, love my dog’ kind of person, but also that Jackson wasn’t meant to be my dog. I underestimated how attached I’d become to a canine companion essentially to make sure my wife was ok while I fed my travel addiction. It should never have surprised me. Twenty-five years of living with two previous labradors, each unique and adorable, who I still mourn to this day, should have made the point. And then there are Jackson’s large size and frankly idiotic idiosyncrasies that make him, well, a job of work to live with. The very energy and eagerness that make him adorable make him a challenge to keep entertained and distracted. His strength and stubborn character don’t make this any easier either.
So what should be our first travel adventure ? Well, as it happened it came soon enough. Towards the tail-end of the year my mum had a fall, and being in her nineties this was no small thing. With increasing frailty and declining faculties, the time had come that she needed more personal and permanent care – some 300 miles from where I was living in Scotland. Our first road trip, then, proved to be a journey to the north of England for a few visits, and to spend some time in her house getting a few things in order.
I picked up the car and Jackson from the house he still lived in, threw what we each needed in the back, and off we headed down the motorway. This would be the first time we’d spent as much as 10 days together, 24 hours a day, since I looked after him for a few days at Christmas, and this time it would be in a place neither of us had ever lived, and that he had never visited – my mum’s 2 bed bungalow in South Cheshire. Now, car journeys have never been a problem for Jackson. Unlike some of his friends, he’s never been worried by car sickness, separation anxiety in the back of the car, or anything other than needing more and more space.
He’d been growing, of course, and now took up pretty much the full boot space. I’d added a dog guard to make sure he was secure in the back, no longer using the handy folding crate he’d used as a pup. The biggest challenge, in fact, was getting him to jump into the space made as comfortable as possible for him, but which was a couple of feet from the ground. Jackson had become far too used to being lifted in, you see, but now weighing in at around 30kg, and with his rapidly developing musculature, surely he could manage the distance. Instructions, demonstrations and treats were swiftly brought into play when he was about a year old, and with judicious placement of biscuits we’d had some success. But needing to get away quickly, I responded to his first refusal by just hoisting him into the back so that we could get on the road. A foolish precedent? Maybe. But on the road we got, and after a short while checking I was going the right way, he decided I was and laid down to sleep.
Motorway service stations aren’t always the most dog-friendly, so with the benefit of experience I knew which ones would give the best chance of combined canine and human breaks in the journey. Coffee and snacks for me, trees and shrubs for him. As it turned out he was a total star, even waiting for me to get back to the car on the occasion my call of nature had to take priority over his. More than five hours on the road plus maybe ¾ of an hour of breaks and we arrived at our destination. Our home for the next ten days in Little Neston with its Little egrets, and little going on.
Then it came to settling him in to a house where the collected furniture and memories, of perhaps 30 years of my parents living there, left little room even for a dog bed, never mind my bags and his, my food and his. After a good walk to stretch off all our aching joints, I took residence in the guest bedroom, Jackson in the hall. Unpacking would have to wait. Like any dog he wanted to help with unpacking, especially socks and snacks, so I lifted what I could out of reach, zipped up the rest and hoped for the best. Kibble in his bowl, ready meal in the oven then I set to with some cleaning, only realising after 11 that I needed to walk him again and head off for some sleep. Sleep, how naive. Like a baby wanting his feed, Jackson visited me every couple of hours, wagging furiously against the radiator like a fire engine siren, deftly launching his paws onto the bed either side of my face and bestowing loving but altogether unexpected kisses on me. Every two hours.
On the nights that followed, he grew increasingly more settled, and once I’d worked out how to keep the draughts away from his bed, and of course how to tire him out, we both started getting a good night’s sleep. We walked, I worked. He supervised, nudged me when we needed a break, and gave me a reason to venture out for that all-important fresh air. He told me when I was working too hard, and when I should be playing with him – in no uncertain terms, with the bounce-and-bark he’d been perfecting over the past few months as a tactic for just this kind of situation. A proper partnership. Another precedent but a much more positive one than being boosted into the back of the car. I knew this would be the case, and was enjoying the company.
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