We are dog sitting this week. Before Scooter became a part of our family he had a past, but who doesn’t? He lived with his sister and parents, a four dog happy pack. Well his sister’s owner decided to spend a week in Disney and Ariel decided there was no place she would rather be than at her brother’s house.

There are two major rules  to watching someone else’s animal while they are gone. Both are,  or should be pretty simple.

One, do not kill or otherwise let the critter die while under your care.

Two, do not lose the beast.

Everything else can be fixed.

Well, Ariel has this issue with not knowing the boundaries of our yard. So the first three days involved her bounding off and up the hill and into the woods behind our house and me scrambling to get dressed and then hiking up the hill in the cold weather calling for her. Once I had enough exercise and was sure that I had broke rule #2 of pet watching I began the slow downward trek to the house at which point she would be sitting at the back door wondering where the heck I had been and what took me so long?

It has been a lot of fun having her here but I think there needs to be a pound per square footage of household limit for dogs. I know aquariums are supposed to be one gallon per inch of fish as a rough estimate. I am still working on the math but when two labs a wife and myself are attempting to grapple for real estate on a king size bed at night, I know I am currently over the limit.