Moving (Even Further) West! Part 3

Don't start the journey in the middle!  Here is Part 1 and here is Part 2.

Part of our planning for the move to California involved figuring out what to do with the dogs.  Obviously, we wouldn't be leaving them behind (I can see it now - house for sale, as is, 3 senior dogs included, non-negotiable), but given their size, age, and number, they wouldn't fit in just one car.  We pondered having Chris drive the truck back to Arizona on Friday, May 20th, and then we'd drive out the next day in a caravan with him and the girls in the truck (because we could pick them up and hoist them into the truck) and Harley and I in the Prius (he takes up the entire back seat, but he rides pretty comfy back there).

As I happened to be discussing this with my buddy Kelley at work, she mentioned, "hey, why don't  you just rent an SUV and take everybody out all at once in one car?"  I thought it was a great idea - all the dogs could go in one vehicle (that was going back to Hertz, so our cars didn't have to smell like nervous dog for weeks afterward), we'd have space for additional things that needed to go with us, and the other person could follow in the Prius.  When I brought the idea up to Chris, he further refined it; since our kiddos are pretty old and creaky, an SUV might be too high to hop into - instead, we'd rent a minivan!

It looked like this one, in fact!

We set up a rental for Chris to pick up after he landed at Sky Harbor in Phoenix late on Friday night, and he'd drop it off within 24 hours at Orange County Airport in Santa Ana, where his truck would conveniently already be parked in a short-term parking lot.  Chris flew in as planned, picked up our gleaming dog chariot, and arrived late Friday night at the Peoria house, where I was already asleep, worn out by happy hour at Four Peaks and packing up the Prius.

Per our normal, I awoke earlier than he did on Saturday morning, so I started working on readying the minivan for the voyage.  The super helpful monkeys in our house insisted on assisting:

We laid the middle seats down into the bottom of the van,
covered all the other seats with old sheets,
and added dog beds for comfortable riding.
Pimp My Ride, indeed.

Eventually, Chris woke up, procured us breakfast from Starbucks, threw away the very last of the trash (sneaking around all Mission Impossible-style, using random dumpsters), and we were just about ready to hit the road.  Bella and Harley ride well in cars (Bella endured the move from Jacksonville to Phoenix via car 10 years ago, after all), but Kaylee is a different beast altogether.  She's higher strung than the other two anyway, and we never really trained her to be good in a car; she tends to fight to get into the front seat with you, and when you stop, she starts making this high-pitched yelping/screaming sound showing how excited she is to be wherever you happen to be (we've actually turned heads arriving at dog parks in this fashion - with rolled up windows in the car - yes, really).  When the move to CA became a reality, we asked our vet what meds they might have that we could give her to help her with the trip (and us too, honestly).  

We scored some anti-anxiety pills, of which the recommended dosage for her weight was 1 to 1.5 pills every 12 hours.  They mentioned to try them out first, and since Toni and I were home all day the Thursday when she was here, I gave one pill (again, the lower end of the dosage) to Kaylee to see how it went.  Oh man.  This dog was wrecked.  She couldn't stand - her legs would just give out on her wherever she was - and she constantly leaked a little stream of urine wherever she would go.  So, super awesome.

Contrast this picture with the one above in the van.
The top one shows her normal face/posture.
This is one messed up dog.

I'm so glad we tried this stuff out beforehand, because I can't imagine trying to physically lift her in and out of even a minivan while she was this doped up and two other monsters were moving around as well.  If we were flying somewhere and she would be in a crate inside an airplane for a few hours, that would be one thing, but given that we were planning on rest stops, etc, this was too much.  About an hour before we departed on Saturday, we gave her 1/2 a pill, keeping the rest of the meds in the minivan with Chris (oh yeah, he drove the dog van the entire way.  That plus driving the UHaul and truck the entire way two weekends before - and did I mention he came home the weekend in between for another load of stuff? - permanently qualifies him for sainthood) in case we needed to dose her again as we progressed westward.

Anywhoo, with the humans fed and the dog doped, we were ready to go!  The taking of many pictures commenced:

We left about half of the furthest back seat unpacked,
so Kaylee would often hop up there and ride while the other two
stayed on the floor.

We started out on the early side of things - around 8am - so when we hit the state border around 10, we stopped at a truck stop for gas and relief (as I may have mentioned earlier, the gas is remarkably cheaper in AZ than CA).  The kids strolled on their leashes for a bit, and then we packed everybody back in the van, so the humans could use the bathroom.  We took turns sitting in the van, keeping the kids company, and after driving a dog-free Prius for two hours and then sticking my head inside that van, the dog smell almost knocked me over.  Did I mention Chris is a saint?

I love this picture of Harley.

"OH MY GOD YOU GUYS WHERE ARE WE?!?!?!"

With break time over, we all got back into our respective cars to keep heading west.  Since we had the perfect amount of leftover turkey and bread in the Peoria house, we made sandwiches ahead of time, so we could stop for lunch at the rest area outside Banning and sit for awhile in the shade, enjoying our food while the kids could relax outside of the van.  After another two hours of driving, we were there!

Attempting to manage the pack

This is the face of a stoned dog

After all of us had one more bathroom break, it was back into the vehicles for the final push!

It was also nap time for some folks

It took about another hour or so to make it to the rental house in Glendora, so with stops, the entire trip took us six hours, which is pretty normal for this voyage.  After emptying the minivan, Chris hopped back in and started down the freeway to the airport to return the faithful chariot, apparently with the windows down the entire time.  For my part, I finished unloading the Prius and introducing the kiddos to their new (albeit temporary) home.

Check out the particularly happy lab face in the middle

As far as other moving updates go, the POD arrived right on time (the Phoenix POD people were hours late each time, but the LA POD people were equally early - they picked the thing up at 6:45 one morning - dang!), and we finished unloading it without issue.

Hooray, our stuff!

Since it was so early when the POD truck came to cart the empty POD away, I closed the girls into the office, as I knew they'd bark the entire time.  Harley, however, could stay in the main part of the house, as he's easy to maneuver around.  Here he is, doing his fierce guard dog stance:

For the sake of reference, note that I'm looking in the window from the front yard of the house - where the POD, coincidentally, is being picked up.  He's standing at the back door, guarding our back yard, just in case the POD people come through the gate and into the back yard with the POD.  He's turned around looking at me, as I was laughing so hard by this point that he could hear me over the PODZILLA and associated equipment.  He's obviously the smartest dog we have.  

Okay, I think that's it for packing and moving (until, of course, we end up moving into another house)!  Next time, a tour of the unique property that is our rental home.

Later!

Amy