We always knew our dog wasn’t the smartest, and now we have proof. Zoe failed her “audition” for cage‑free boarding.
When our local PetSmart Pet Hotel shut down last year, we went looking for a replacement and stumbled into a miracle: Camp Run-A-Mutt, a magical place where dogs roam free like an all-inclusive Sandals resort. No stacked metal cages. No prison bars whenever we go on vacation. They even get a “caring human” who sleeps in the room with them every night.
I don’t even get that a lot of the time!
My wife and I stood at the observation window to see for ourselves. We watched pooches of all sizes and breeds wrestle and chase each other all around the 15,000-square-foot indoor-outdoor playground.
All this for only $15 more per night than having the Pet Hotel lock our loved one into solitary confinement and go home for the night. (We actually had to sign a release absolving them of responsibility should Zoe suddenly be found the next morning a la Jeffrey Epstein.)
“Yes!” my wife and I both shouted in unison. But the decision wasn’t just ours.
“When can you bring Zoe by for her audition?” asked a Camp Run-A-Mutt staffer named Julie.
Oh, she gets a TV deal, too?
No, that’s their name for its three‑to‑five‑hour temperament evaluation. They check how your dog handles meeting the pack, being handled by strangers, dealing with noise and stimulation, and coming when called.
Uh-oh. We had high academic hopes for Zoe early on, but we aren’t exactly living with Lassie here. In fact, if the two dogs ever met, Lassie would be walking Zoe on a leash within 20 minutes.
I once spent $100 on a talking button toy that played my wife’s recorded voice saying, “Potty.” That way, Zoe could alert us herself instead of sneaking off under the bed. She sniffed it once, stepped on it twice by accident, and never looked at it again. It ended up in our apartment dumpster, where it landed face-down and said “potty” over and over.
“I’m sure she’ll do fine,” Julie said, as she scheduled Zoe’s audition for the following week.
Doggie SATs
We spent the week leading up to Zoe’s audition running her through a canine Stanley Kaplan course of every trick we were ever able to teach her before giving up in frustration: sit, come when called, sit again.
Zoe excels at the sitting, but she refuses to come unless her name is accompanied by the sound of cheese unwrapping or the scent of a microwaved pot pie. Otherwise, she thinks it’s a trap to get her into the bathtub.
Zoe basically flunked recess
Genetically, Zoe is half Chihuahua and half question mark. (Literally. I spent $80 on a DNA kit that returned a report with an actual “?” for one of her parents.) But her personality is less genetics and more pandemic. We adopted her in February 2020, back when my wife and I both worked in offices and were busy raising our own little human.
In other words, we lied like dogs on Zoe’s adoption application when we said we would never leave her alone for four or more hours.
Then the shutdown made honest dog adoption applicants out of us. We’ve worked remotely ever since. The loneliest Zoe usually gets is when I drive our daughter to school. (Zoe learned long ago not to even bother greeting me at the door when I return, since the good human never comes back with me.)
But COVID made Zoe suspicious of all humans who weren’t us. No matter how friendly any others who walked by during her formative months seemed to be, she picked up from our body language that all humans who don’t live in our apartment are biohazards.
Drive of Shame
The phone call came exactly three hours into her audition. Like a jury reaching a verdict before lunch, this was either really good or really bad news.
“Can you come pick up Zoe?” asked a woman who was not Julie.
Zoe getting into some sock trouble.
“Did she pass?” I asked. We hadn’t been able to work or eat all day.
“We’ll go over everything when you get here,” the woman said.
No one who has good news has ever said, “We’ll go over everything when you get here.”
During the five-minute drive that felt like five hours, my wife and I each blamed the other for raising Zoe wrong. I accused her of being a “treat-pusher” who never enforces the “sit” rule. She accused me of letting Zoe parade around with stolen socks because they’re never mine.
We saw the verdict in the woman’s eyes as she walked Zoe out from the back.
“I’m afraid Zoe won’t be staying with us,” she said. “But we loved having her.”
When pressed for details, she confessed that Zoe “had trouble” coming when called for feeding time. Several attempts were made.
Seriously? Zoe failed walking toward food?!
“Did she know it was food you were calling her for?” I asked. “Were there cheese wrappers or pot pies?”
The woman just gave us a sympathetic smile and wished us luck.
We found another kennel right up the street. It’s pretty much the same as the Pet Hotel. Zoe has no idea how close she came to freedom.
