Coach's MUN Trip Part 1

Every year  I take our Southeastern Guide Dog puppy on a Model United Nations conference so that the puppy can experience a hotel room.  Usually we take them to the KnightMUN conference at UCF so that they only have one night in the hotel.  However, this year Homecoming was during KnightMUN, so we didn't go.  That left GatorMUN or FHSMUN.  These were all multi-night conferences.  Since Michele and I usually room together and she could only go to FHSMUN, we opted for the FHSMUN conference so that I would have a back-up person if I needed one.

Coach in front of the Hilton Altamonte Springs sign.

We were taking two vans to Altamonte Springs, which is on the other side of Orlando, for this tournament which was going to take place in the Altamonte Springs Hilton. I would like to add a little note here that if you need to stay somewhere with your guide dog puppy, that choosing a Hilton would be an excellent idea.  When we arrived with nine students, four adults and one black goldadore and all of us trooped in through the doors (Tim had already checked us in) and decamped in the lobby for Tim to hand out keys, as kids started to peel out and head for their rooms, Michele and I and Coach became more and more visible. Yet at no time did one hotel employee do anything but smile and look welcoming.  In fact, the entire time we have been here, every employee has been friendly, welcoming and happy to see us. I highly recommend the Hilton.

Coach did great on the elevators (he's an old hand at elevators) and he was very excited to see the room.  He also enjoyed the full length mirror, but not as much as some other puppies have in the past. Because we usually do this trip in Oct, when we have a tiny puppy, we bring a crate for the puppy to sleep in.  This time we just had Coach on a tie down.  So the first night was quite a trip.

It began with Coach being a little confused about where was Fred? Because when he goes to bed at home he usually sleeps on Fred's side of the bed when he is on tie-down.  When we turned off the lights, Coach went into high alert.  Uh oh.  That's not good.  The light was streaming in under the hotel hallway door and shadows could be seen walking past the door.  Coach was watching.  Intently. Then someone went into their room. We could hear the door shut. Click.

Coach let out a loud big boy bark. EEEP went my heart.

"No! No noise Coach."

"Down."  I tried to get Coach to go down, which is very hard to do when you are lying in bed, yet half leaning out over the side of the bed trying to grab the leash and give a correction.  Hmm.

Coach jumped up into a sit. The air conditioner had just turned off with a thump!  Coach let out a half hearted mini-bark.  In my head all the people in our hallway had just poked their heads out and were talking to each other:

"Did you hear that dog?"

"It's coming from room 626!"

"We should call the front desk and tell on them."

"It's outrageous!!"

This is worse than the ukelele playing kid in the elevator!  And what the hell was he up to?  And where was his high school advisor?  And what were they thinking allowing him to bring a ukelele? Seriously! Oh, back to barking...What should I do?  Would I ever get to sleep?  Would he ever calm down?  Would people ever quit walking up and down the freaking hallway?

Wait a minute.  We have extra pillows! I got up and turned on the obnoxiously bright lights and took the multitude of extra pillows that they stuffed onto our bed and pushed them under the door so that all the light and sound was blocked out. Problem solved!

Photo of the three pillows stuffed at the foot of the door.

Coach sitting by the side of the road.

Coach relaxed and went down. I relaxed and went to sleep.

Tomorrow: Dinner at Cafe Murano and puking.

Don't forget! If you have been following the blog for a while and you have a favorite post, you have an opportunity to to nominate it for your favorite pet blog for the 2^nd Annual BlogPaws “Nose-to-Nose” Social Media Pet Blogging Awards!  March 8th is the deadline.  Click on the following categories to submit an entry:

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Blog owner: CD McLean

Blog Address: http://mcleanpup.blogspot.com

Blog owner's email address: mcleacd@gmail.com