From Lake D'Arbonne State Park on the northern border of Louisiana, starting week 6 of our winter trip south.
It appears that most folks here in LA and in Texas travel with their pets. Most of our camping neighbors have the latest Megolith 70 ft RV's that have a separate bumpout just for Rover and Mitsy, and so we rarely see the cats (except at the last park where the neighbor fed his 4 cats outside and a dozen feral cats -- he explained were dumped cats by campers wanting them to have a good home..).
This morning, at 40F, the patter of on/off rain on the roof and a mostly empty campgrounds, I was up early to do a batch of laundry, take a shower in the very nice shower/bathroom area and enjoy a little "under the awning" spring rain.
Two other campers were up early too. One had his black, ugly, snarling mutt-- evidently a cross between one of those pugs that ran into a wall too many times and smashed his face in and a labrador. Coal black and taking up the whole shower area as his owner, a camouflage wearing man of about 35 finished scrubbing him down.
"He got into a mess last night, so I tied him outside as he stunk to much to bring in."
"Oh, that must be the dog that barked all night?" I commented trying to show some irritation. "Didn't hear him, or I would have stopped him -- can't hear through the Megolith's insulated walls -- one of the reasons we got it," he commented appearing to congratulate himself on his foresight.
"I let him out to do his business, and he must have found a dead animal to roll in. Absolutely stunk, so I couldn't let him back in and gave him a shower."
The bathroom stunk of rotten animal carcass as well as the usual wet dog stench. And of course the shower area was not fit for humans anymore. My shower will wait until after the camp host comes in and does here daily mop down and clean.
I figured he would next take all of his towels and wash cloths next door to the laundry, and as I had mine along to do an early batch, beat him to it so I could wash before he started his dog trappings.
By then it was getting light and the other neighbor still here was out with his dog -- a smaller white one. He walks the dog every morning, taking her across the road from his campsite to the children's playground area where she does her business near the big slide.
I walked up the hill and was about to check the air in my tire that has been leaking, when another two dogs came trotting in and one of them decided to help with some stop leak of his own.
Yesterday, just before the gas price jumped from 1.84 to 1.94, I filled up the tank. I looked for the window scrubber and couldn't find it. Looking around, I saw it in use. A SUV was parked nearby not buying gas, but a woman had it and had taken her two portable small dog carriers out of the back door of the van and was using it to squeegee the rubber floor mat that the dogs had obviously soiled. She came back with it, soaked it up some more and headed back to do more cleaning
When we came down, I noticed one of the motels we stopped at -- Motel 6, said "pet friendly" on the office door.
"Do you have non-smoking, non-pet room for rent?" I asked.
"All of our rooms are open for pets, but I do have a non-smoking one."
"No pet free ones at all?"
"Well, we used to do that, but found that pet owners just lie and bring in their pets anyway. So gave up trying to enforce it."
We stopped at many rest stops on the freeway on the way down to TX. At one, I talked a little while to the maintenance man (TX parks were "sponsored" by Geico -- and in return Geico took on part of the cost of the ongoing maintenance}.
"What problems do you have with the rest stops?" I asked.
"The worst is pet shit. We have pet run area, but it seems that pet owners don't want to walk over there, and so sneak their dogs into the picnic area. Real mess."
Now before you think I am totally anti-pet, I don't believe that it is the pet's fault, but the owners. And I am sure that there are some conscientious pet owners out there -- seems like I read a story about one not so long ago--although it was in a fiction book....
