Being married to a consultant and then choosing to travel with him is a never ending series of packing your bags and staying in hotels. I have found myself in hotels of all shapes and sizes in towns as small as Stroudsburg in USA and as big as Shanghai but I am not complaining. There have been many adventures along the way, some minor and some life-altering. One of those adventures was a tiny bundle called Bumbleshoot who was named after a music festival at the rescue center in North America.

We did not want to name him as he was going to be part of us only for a few weeks till he got adopted. But shouting Bumbleshoot every time he chewed my belt or got into my wardrobe in the hotel room was tiresome hence he was cagily named Chambu as he followed me dutifully from room to room. To rewind a little, we were living in a small city in Pennsylvanian called Conshohocken and were living in an extended stay hotel where we stayed for close to four months or more. It was around this time that I heard of Wags Rescue and the idea of fostering a dog got planted in my head. I had never owned a dog and my husband had not warmed up to the idea of being a dog lover.

We called up the rescue center and after they had contacted our referrals and had confirmed with our hotel Bumbleshoot came into our lives. Chambu as we later called him was a four month old black lab mix pup. He was part of a litter that the rescue center had saved from a Kill Shelter.  He came into our life and hotel room, untrained, much to the chagrin of the hotel’s housekeeping staff. The rescue center insisted that the pup be crate trained and hence gave us a crate and a few other essentials.

The first night that the pup spent with us in the crate he howled all night while we Googled frantically and most sites advised us to leave him in the crate till he got used to it. Finally somewhere around 3 am we finally gave in and let him share our bed, where he happily snuggled.

The next day was spent in systematically crate training him and he learnt fast, his adopted family later told us that he was the recognized as the most well behaved dog at a training center they had taken him to. Yay! us future parents now only if the kid was this easy! We then started the quest of potty training which took a little extra time and also teaching him to walk with a leash since most often he had his own agenda and would sometimes just plonk on the grassy patch near the hotel. Time moved fast and Chambu got adopted by a lovely family in the neighborhood. We had quite a lot of adventures during his short stay with us like taking his to the vet when got an allergic reaction we were unable to diagnose (this was taken care of by the rescue center), making friends with fellow dog lovers, making a dog lover out of my husband, getting freaked out the first time he was taken near the river and having my make up bag and belts messed up whenever I left him alone for a bit.

He stayed with us for close to two months during which we learnt a lot from each other. The last day before his family picked him up was a very emotional day for me as we spent most of the day snuggling and going for a walk near the Schuylkill River. His family came that evening and he happily climbed into the car. We received a few pictures of him later as a strapping young dog and are quite happy that we let this little one come into our lives even if it was for a short duration.

The image is a painting done by me in memory of this time with our foster dog. So ofcourse image credits go to me.