Adventures in Babysitting

 Last night we went to the wedding of the daughter of one of my first friends at school.  Eileen and Tom are the parents of Maggie and Eileen is the health teacher where I am the librarian.  Every year Eileen and I work on a research project with the freshmen class so we have become very good friends over the years.

Even though Jammy has become quite comfortable with the kitchen/crate substitute, given his separation anxiety issues, we wanted to make sure that he wasn’t left alone too long.  So we made some babysitting arrangements.  Christina, who is our collections development librarian at school, also serves as my back up Jam corraler with Jan, our library assistant.  I've trained the both of them in appropriate Southeastern puppy handling behavior so that if I need to leave Jam with them for a meeting he is appropriately taken care of by adults.  This baby sitting job would be an at-home, no-coat job.    

Christina lives right by where the wedding was taking place, so we could drop Jammy off and then pick him up on the way back.  It would work out perfectly!  Christina was free so we made the date and dropped him off.

Here Jam sits in the doorway in a rare moment of nonshadowing, looking off to the left into the foyer and the front door.

When we went back to pick him up, Christina said he was a little nervous about being left and did some heavy breathing for about an hour.  But after he realized the we weren't coming back, he decided to do what he normally does when he thinks he might be left again: he will shadow the person.

Here is a photo of Christina cooking.  You are looking down at her feet and Jam is lying in between her feet.

 So, Jam decided that Christina was his glue and he stuck to her.  He followed her from room to room, even the bathroom.  He watched her cook dinner.
 He watched as she ate dinner.

Jam under foot at the dinner table.

More Jammy between the feet.

Sometimes, he would change it up and be on the feet.

Or sometimes, it was beside the feet.

Finally, at some point during the night, he got relaxed enough that he wasn't compelled to shadow.  He could explore on his own.

Jammy, sitting in the living room.

He decided he would check out the side window and see what was out there.  After all, during his walk, he did smell that there was a crazy cat lady next door and it did smell like there were 100s of cats lurking about. 

Holy Crap!  Crazy cat eyes glowing in the dark at Jammy as he peers out the window!

Boy, did he score on the cat jackpot!  There was a crazy cat just outside on the sidewalk and it was crazy enough to sit there and torment Jammy.

Jammy staring at the cat who is just barely visible on the sidewalk in the upper left of the window.

 He sat, and he sat.

Jammy standing and staring out the window.

Then he stood and stared.  But at the point the cat had had enough and wandered off for more interesting things to do.  Poor Jammy was left to wait it out for us to come home.  He finally curled up and slept.

Eileen, the one with the umbrella, watching her daughter and husband walk down the aisle.

The wedding, by the way, was lovely.

Father and bride walking down the aisle.

The bride was stunning and the wedding was a lot of fun.  We didn't stay out too, too late.  But, I had to get a few dances in!