Better Than a 'Welcome' Mat

A few hours after deplaning and napping, we were in the Bavarian Alps outside Schliersee, Germany. Hours without Shadow: 23. Hours without sleep: 28.

An unforeseen benefit of having a dog, I recently discovered, is the tempering of that tragic feeling that usually accompanies the end of a vacation.

Don't get me wrong - getting back to work, to everyone else's problems and to the self-imposed pressures of everyday life is never easy. But it's a lot less difficult to board that plane knowing someone's been waiting... all week... to welcome you home with more enthusiasm than winners on "The Price is Right."

My husband and I just returned from a week in Germany and Austria. We had a wonderful time exploring King Ludwig II's "crazy castles," sampling Bavarian fare (beer, sausage and pretzels), cruising through the mountain valleys, and navigating the winding streets of Salzburg. But it would be a lie to say we didn't feel like part of our family was missing most of the time. I will admit turning my cell phone on far too often to see this pitifully cute mug (see photo above) staring back at me asking "Are you coming home yet? Geez. What's taking so long?"

Shadow woke to Day 5 of his vacation as we headed to the castles

Prior to this trip, Shadow and I had never been apart for more than one night, and I worried how he would fare with strangers for eight whole days. Would he cry the entire time? Would he think we abandoned him? Would he be scared? Would he have fun or would he be locked in a small cage wondering what he did wrong?

Neuschwanstein Castle in Hohenswangau is a real life fairy tale

I searched high and low for a good kennel that was nearby, trustworthy, reputable, and was run by people who seemed to really care about dogs. I had already tried daycare at the local animal hospital, but was so disenchanted with that experience that a week-long sleep-over there was completely out of the question. I finally settled on a kennel that came with solid recommendations (from friends of my mother – the big time), that let him have his own food, toys, bed, and indoor/outdoor pens. As a plus, it was only a few feet from the house in which the owners (a family with beloved dogs of their own) lived.

The Bavarian royals sure picked a nice spot for their retreat

About a month before our scheduled departure, I visited the place and met Hank, the man in charge. A few weeks later, Shadow got his test run – one night to familiarize himself and to understand that we would always come back for him. It was a complete success, and made dropping him off on the way to the airport a million times easier for everyone.

Innsbruck, Austria, is full of winding streets and painted houses

It also lessened the guilt for Chris and I – while gazing at the snow-covered peaks of the Alps, lifting a liter in the Hofbrauhaus, or waiting for the Glockenspiel start moving – to think that Shadow was having a wonderful vacation of his own back on the familiar side of the ocean.

When we returned, Shadow just about popped with excitement. Circling and jumping (a temporary lapse after a week without our rules), licking and wagging his tail like it was a propeller, he was thrilled to see "his people" again. And we were thrilled to be back with our puppy.

Eventually, the sun set on our week in Bavaria and we returned home not to a cold empty house, but to one bursting with joy and excitement. Full disclosure, this photo is actually from Day One, just a few minutes after the one at the top of this blog entry. How's that for full circle?

I go to court

Back in April, I received a thick red and white card summoning me to fulfill by civic duty as a juror. Had this happened a few months earlier, I might have celebrated the chance to take a rare and government-mandated rest from work -- away even from those third-arm cell phones and persistent e-mails that have antiquated the meaning of the word "vacation." But as timing usually goes, I had just welcomed Shadow home

Still sleeping on training pads, having accidents like it was his civic duty, and crying every second he was alone, he simply couldn't be left or pawned off on anyone. So I invoked my right to one postponement, hoping that just maybe the courts would forget about me altogether.

Silly me to think I could pull the wool over Uncle Sam's eyes. I spent the past two days at the Westchester County Courthouse, pawning Shadow off on my mother on Monday, and placing him for the first time in daycare on Tuesday. Neither went extremely well.

I returned early Monday afternoon to a very disobedient puppy. Essentially, during my absence Shadow employed the quintessential "you're not my mommy so I don't have to listen to you" toddler act on my mother and brother. What he got in return was a day at the local animal hospital. It was the first time for all of us, and I was comforted at the thought of his being safe and in the hands of professionals, who promised to feed him and had a large yard where he would play. Upon picking him up, however, he raced out like a convict whose shackles just broke. He was an absolute tornado of energy, which made me worry that he'd sat in a cage all day. Immediately upon escape, an unusual number and frequency of bathroom breaks made this fear an almost certainty. And I am mad about it. Finding a good daycare provider is turning out to be harder than I thought. But I'll keep trying. Maybe Uncle Sam will reimburse me the $25...

Which brings me back to my original subject. I completely understand the need for ordinary people to serve on juries, and I have no objection to doing so, but the communication and the my-way-or-the-jail-cell attitude could use a little tweaking.

In Westchester, citizens are allowed one six-month postponement, and exemptions no longer exist unless you can't speak English or have a serious medical condition. (It took the administrative judge, the commissioner of jurors, and a secretary 90 minutes to say what I just said in one sentence.)I have a puppy. That's not a big deal. But women with infants are required to serve. Unemployed or self-employed people are required to forfeit what salary they could scrounge up, in order to pay for parking, gas, and possibly child- or pet-care for days or even weeks. In just two days I spent $60 in parking, gas and care; imagine that plus lost salary over two weeks.

During my service, I encountered a recent college graduate who had to cancel her job interview -- a holy grail in the middle of an economic crisis that has pitched an impervious membrane over the current workforce, keeping out the flood of new diploma holders -- in order to sit in a room for 4 hours, then be dismissed and told to return the next morning to continue sitting and waiting. Does anyone not see where the system could use a little work?

At the same time, those who actually want to sit through a trial are tossed into the mix with those missing their best friend's impromptu wedding. Why not have a database of people who genuinely want to serve (with biases and conflicts properly vetted, of course) and fill the remaining spots with those who would rather be elsewhere? Why not offer a small fee to volunteers but still restrict how often they can serve to avoid "serial jurors?" It wouldn't cover the costs of transportation and childcare, but hey, throwing people a bone once in a while can go a long way. (Would you really want your life hanging on the opinions of miserable people who are pissed off that they're losing money and time at your trial to begin with?)

It is the 21st century, after all. If I can fill out a bunch of bubbles online and get a list of 20 cities in which I'd be happiest living, why can't Americans fill out something similar and let a computer figure out the best days to assign who where -- and dismiss those whose profiles are already screaming "undesirable." Goodness knows we've got enough state employees and politicians sitting on their hands in Albany -- maybe they could pitch in.

I won't even get into my problems with announcing personal information to a room full of 65 strangers, including the one in the defendant's seat. But if anyone with any power happens to be reading a girl-meets-dog blog with a flimsy tie to politics... does corralling 1,400 people a week into a holding room like cattle, where they wait to be deployed the moment a judge decides he/she's going to trial (or sent home when everyone settles out of court) really sound well thought out? Is it really so much more important to inconvenience 1,400 other people over them?

To sum up, Shadow was pretty darn pissed at Chris and I last night. And after being pawned off and abandoned for two days in a row (he probably thought we gave him up yesterday), neither of us can blame him. But today he seems much happier. Like me, maybe this whole experience has reminded him how good he's got it, and how important that is to remember even when the little things get under our skin. For the next six years, at least I have my freedom.