Adventures of the senior dog

Sometimes I wonder if Elvis actually is going senile… or if he’s really just super smart.

Most nights now, Elvis the senior dog sleeps up in the tent with us. Michael carries him up and down the ladder. This is, in fact, the opposite of what we want. How did it begin? Well, his first panic attack happened way back near Jackson Hole. That was when I crawled into the topper slept back there. We thought it was a one-off, or at best occasional, occurrence.

Now, almost every night we have the same ritual: Michael puts Elvis in the back of the truck. (Bailey is already in there, asleep.) Then Michael comes up to the tent and we both try to be as quiet as we can. It’s like putting a toddler to bed! But after about five minutes, the whining and barking begins. It’s Elvis, not Bailey. We try to wait it out, but the longest we lasted was 40 minutes. Michael brings Elvis up to the tent and everyone finally goes to sleep.

Senility? Or smarts? Personally, I think that since we replaced the carpet with the rubber matting, Elvis just doesn’t like it back there. And he’s trained us to let him sleep up in the tent.

Either way, having Elvis up in the tent does make the late night bathroom run a little more challenging. First, Elvis sleeps like the dead. Second, he sleeps at the door of the tent. So it takes some gentle shoving to get him up and moved. And as soon as I’m gone, he takes up residence on my pillow.

The next challenge happens when I reclaim my space. Last night, Elvis chose to stay directly between me and Michael. Which was cute, except for…

pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant 

Right in my ear. After about a minute of that, I snapped my fingers, said his name, and pointed at the foot of the tent. Elvis got up like the obedient dog he used to be and moved. As he flopped down at my feet I thought to myself, Ahh… now it will be nice and qui-

PANTPANTPANTPANTPANTPANTPANTPANTPANTPANTPANTPANTPANTPANTPANT

*sigh*

In actual good news, we discovered that we can get to the Navajo Rocks trails directly from our campsite out on Lone Mesa road. Sweet! I think the Big Mesa trail might be my favorite trail in Moab. It goes directly under Big Mesa, over some slickrock, and I can ride almost all of it.

Our original plan was to be in Moab through the 10th, because some friends of ours were coming out on the 8th and 9th. But they had to cancel, so now we face the dilemma of what to do now? I mean, if we don’t leave here soon, we might just become permanent residents. I could always get a job at City Market. Seriously. They are severely understaffed right now (and have the signs out to apologize for it), and the help they do have is occasionally less than stellar. On Sunday, the surly cashier handed me my receipt with a blunt “well, there’s that.”

But there are so many other things in Utah to see, like Zion and Bryce Canyon, and Lake Powell. And, as my friend Kevin pointed out, Goblin Valley. After showing Michael some pictures from Little Wildhorse Canyon, he wants to go hike a slot canyon too.

So we’ll probably head out of Moab around Monday the 10th. Just an FYI for you, Michael has a new challenge: the GoRuck Challenge. There are multiple events, but the one he signed up for is in San Luis Obispo on December 2nd. I’ll keep you all posted on his training…