Dog Day Afternoons
“Lux wasn’t a happy dog,” she said, talking about a recent trip she and a colleague, Jill made with their two dogs who met for the first time the day of the trip. “Watching, I wished I could have been her. I would, as usual, pay for my lifelong compulsion to completely overdo anything worth doing at all.”
It was dog meets dog.
“Earlier that morning Lux had lumbered out of the Trailblazer and stood in my driveway staring straight ahead,” says Wiley. “We were relieved. Once the dogs were loaded up Lux stayed in her black dog depression. Lux and her owner, photographer, Jill Johnson, have traveled together a lot. Jill, who admits to being organized but swears she isn’t practical, sure looked that way to me. P.D. (my dog) of course, jumped out of the Trailblazer and nearly pulled me through a shrub when we finally got to the Laughing Horse Lodge in Port Aransas. Don’t get me wrong; I love my dog P.D. I feed him well; walk him, well, a lot of the time; and give him Meaty Bones nearly every time he stares at the box long enough.”
Darnell and her husband Loyd are the perfect dog people to run a dog motel, states Wiley.
“Our cabin at Laughing Horse met the basic people needs,” writes Wiley.
Then it was breakfast and the beach.
“It wasn’t five minutes after check-in before I was lying, bruised and stunned on the cement patio,” wrote Wiley. “The first night Lux still didn’t feel good and we were tired. I woke up at about 1 a.m. scared out of my mind. The next day was the best.”
Wiley reports that one of the reasons to go to Port Aransas is that you can drive down the beach for miles.
“On this weekday, the beach was practically deserted, especially as you got farther from town and the water was warm,” she said via email. “After a couple of hours everybody was hot and tired and really, really sandy. We retired to the cabin and washed everybody off. The trouble started after we went back to the cabin.”
Lux had a very bad night.
“There was a banging on the door,” Wiley said in a recent interview. “Not much happened, other than rain. At 1:30 a.m. I awakened to the sound of a dog whining. The whining resumed and this time I realized it was a deeper sound. I jumped up without putting on shoes, found Lux didn’t have her collar on, looped her leash around her neck in some ridiculous way that made the whole thing about two feet long and headed outside, bent over with the short leash, trying to avoid stickers in the dark. Lux trudged along in that way that makes you understand the word ‘dogged.’ I finally gave up, took her inside, and woke up Jill.”
Wiley said that by about 6 a.m. they all got up and life was moving on at the cabin.
Port Aransas is a nine or ten-hour drive from the Metroplex of Dallas/Fort Worth, TX. Aransas has plenty of other accommodations also.
For a light breakfast, Wiley suggests going to Cotter Street Coffee House at 162 W. Cotter Avenue and to Lisabella’s Bistro and Java Bar at 224 E. Cotter Street for lunch.
“After reading what the experts have to say about pet travel I decided we were lucky,” said Wiley. “You should introduce your pets to each other before you leave if you’re taking more than one. If a dog isn’t used to being in the car go on some test runs beforehand. Watch for motion sickness during your test drives. Check with your destination for pet policies and deposits. Bring pet food and water from home, food and water dishes, any medication Spot takes, your vet’s phone numbers, a cooler with ice, something to cover the car seats and motel furniture as well as a pet hairbrush, leashes and/or harnesses, and cables or leads of some kind that can be attached to something on a patio or other outdoor areas so everyone can co-exist peacefully outside once in awhile.”
