Travel Dog

In his day, Smid wore many hats. Or he would have, if he could have gotten one over his mo-hawk, or his ears. Sometimes, Smid was a Travel Dog.

I used to take genealogy researching trips. I left him at home on short trips but if I thought I was going to be gone for a while, like when I had a week off, I'd take Smid with me. Motel 6 became a big player because they accept small pets. I went into one, one time, and the lady behind the counter asked if he was small. I looked over my shoulder and pointed toward the car. Smid was up on his hind legs with his paws on the steering wheel. I pointed toward the car and said, "there he is." She said, "yeah, he's small." I said, "he's itty-bitty." That was an inside joke. You could sweet talk Smid and he'd get all fuzzy and bat his eyes, especially if you told him he was an itty-bitty beebee (baby). He ate that up for some reason.

One of the deals with taking Smid was frequent bathroom breaks. There's a roadside park on Highway 69, North of Minela Texas that I glance at, to this day, when I drive by. I think to myself, there's Smid's place. He tried to take the bark off of many a tree at that roadside park. You'd have to watch him because he'd try and lift his leg on all of the trees at the park. The little fella only had so much water. After a while, he was only ritualistically hiking his leg, symbolically urinating. I have better things to do with my time than watch that.

Since we'd usually head East on I20, we stopped at many roadside parks. He'd take his time at each one. He'd sniff around until he found just the right spot. It was at the Motel 6 when I discovered his "finish" trigger word. It was some handy information to know. Especially when the wind was blowing.