Clean Run - April 2017 - 51

A Good Night's Rest
By Laura Hartwick, illustrations by author

It was a dark and rainy night the first time baby Border Collie
Banksy met a cheap motel. She recoiled with a horror so far
reserved for friendly veterinarians and whirling helicopters the
instant the door opened and the room revealed its laminatefloored grandeur. Recoiled is putting it mildly; she flung herself
backward to the end of her leash and tried to air bolt across
the parking lot to the Jack in the Box drive-thru, conveniently
located just outside our room. Because what's a wet disembodied talking clown head garbling about fries compared to a
warm, dry motel room? The little dogs had already made themselves at home inside, doing their loud and customary, "We love,
love, love motels!" happy dance leap-fest up and down on the
slippery cigarette-burned bedspread.
In an instant, there was a blur of freaking out Border Collie, little
black dogs racing out into the stormy night to the possibility of
flooded parking lot burgers, burritos, and who knows what else.
Somehow I corralled the small dogs back inside, and wrestled
Banksy back toward the door.There was no time for careful click
and treat training, slow acclimatization to the diseased bedding,
slick floors and machete-hacked countertops. I grabbed her up,
wrestled her in, and deposited her dripping self onto a bed-
where she remained, in terror, without budging, all night.
By the next morning, she was cool. No mention made of
the drama from the night before. Motel rooms from then on
were awesome.
When you live the glamorous agility lifestyle, you spend some
time on the road with your dogs. No way around it.Yeah, there
are choices. But if you don't have a campout vehicle, you're
probably going to need to cram yourself and however many
dogs you're towing along in a motel unless all the trials are
near your house. When you travel with a pack, as a lot of us do,
and trials are far flung to the north, south, east, and west, your
budget sleepover choices are slim. Good chance you're staying
April 17 | Clean Run

at the same place as me, wedged along the freeway with a big
bright sign, the one with the lowest nightly rate of them all.
We may not always remember the details of every single run,
whether we got that gamble, or which bar got smacked down
in Grand Prix. But I can quote word for word the 4 am soliloquy of the drunken loud voice poet named Silent K in the
room next door at our usual joint down the road from the
all-night casino. She got that name on account of how it reflects
her observationness of humankind and how she sees and hears
everything in her travels of the world, helping orphans of the
universe. Everything.You know what I mean?
That's a quote from Silent K. Maybe some day she'll have the
room next door to yours. Or probably, she already has.
When we traveled to our very first faraway agility trial, many
years ago, I don't think my dogs had ever stayed in a motel. They
freaked out alarm barked at every single sound, and I didn't
know the drill. Through trial and error I learned to pre-investigate the room, check the floors for pills and needles, make sure
the plumbing works, and scout for bugs before covering the
beds with the home sheeting system. Top sheets for the dogs, all
the rest of the sheets for me. Touch as few surfaces as possible
while checking behind any over the bed landscape paintings of
clipper ships and magical forest glens for hidden peepholes.
I usually assume any weird stains on the wall aren't blood. Management would repaint a grisly murder scene, wouldn't they?
There are inevitables when the bar is set very low. Unless you
have bravery greater than mine, you don't ever want to remove
your socks or lay down in the tub.Your TV remote probably
won't work, and the single channel exclusively plays loud explosion movies with guys in black leather running down dark alleys
with laser guns. The room temperature lives in a coffin-sized
box and is controlled by the trolls inside with hammers who
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - April 2017