Packing light is overrated

I am not a fan of packing (or unpacking) and I think packing light is only to be done if absolutely necessary. This weekend I have the minivan to myself and only 2 dogs, so there's no packing light. Woo hoo!

A picture of what we took with us (except the 3 hard sided crates) is below. Ziggy decided to inspect everything before I put it in the van. Either that or he was trying to find the bag with the food in it. I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt, and believe that he was checking our bags for any dangerous substances before we travelled. His next job just might be with the TSA.





Pete (aka The Husband) asked me exactly how many crates I was taking. The answer: 6.

That may seem a bit overboard, but I really think will result in a lot of saved time. Here's how it works:

* In the van: 2 wire crates for travel (too heavy to lug around)

* At the clinic site: 2 soft sided crates that will stay there all weekend (no need to pack them up & take them with me every night because I have 4 more!)

* And, finally, in our hotel room: 2 crates. The soft sided crate is for Maggie (she's a GOOD girl in her crate. All the time.) The hard sided crate is for Ziggy. He's not such a good boy in his crate in a hotel. At the National Specialty I came back from dinner one night to find him roaming around the room. He dug & chewed his way through a high-quality soft crate. It's now out for repairs, and has been replaced by the crate seen on the right in the picture below:




Maggie, Ziggy & I just spent a few hours in the car, but now we're safely in our hotel room, ready to get a good rest so we're in our best form for the clinic tomorrow.