2013

Whenever I traveled anywhere, I could either bring Sharav with me, or pay (or convince) someone to stay in my apartment and house-sit and dog-sit, or pay (or convince) someone to take him for the duration of my trip, or pay to board him in a kennel. All of these were risky and costly in different ways, but with only the rarest exceptions, it always worked out perfectly!

The ideal situation would have been to bring Sharav with me, but that’s not really feasible a lot of the time – and even when it would fit into the travel itinerary, shipping a dog in cargo on an airplane is always expensive and often dangerous. He did come with me on some big and small trips, like the time we went to visit friends for the weekend on a rural Israeli hilltop in 2007, a visit to America from Israel in 2010, our cross country road trip in 2013, and several other road trips up and down Interstate 95, such as Thanksgiving at my parents’ house in 2014 (our rental car broke down just past the Holland Tunnel, 2016 (we walked five miles over the Manhattan Bridge from Murray Hill to Boerum Hill) and 2021 (the last time we traveled), but mostly this wasn’t an option for me (and it didn’t help that I haven’t driven a car since 2011, and I don’t think I ever drove a car with Sharav in it).

The next best option always was to try to find someone who would agree to stay in my apartment with Sharav, so he wouldn’t have to be taken out of his normal environment or his daily routine. Thinking back now on all the times people agreed to do this for me, I’m actually pretty stunned that so many people did it! Multiple different friends or family members moved temporarily into my apartment in Tel Aviv, both of my apartments in San Francisco, and both of my apartments in Manhattan to facilitate my desire (or need) to travel – or sometimes because I was paying them. And they put up with some pretty detailed instructions: I just re-read the Google doc that I prepared for my parents when they stayed with Sharav in my apartment for a ten-day trip to Japan in 2019, and it ran to a whopping 20 pages!

I got other people to watch Sharav in their homes at least once in Tel Aviv (the only thing I remember was that it was an older woman and she had a bunch of those “sad clown” portraits in her apartment and I was really creeped out) and a bunch of times in New York, and of course my parents opened their arms and their home to him many times over the years, including as recently as 2020.

I’m pretty sure that Sharav never stayed at a kennel in Tel Aviv or San Francisco, but he went to Happy Dogs of Stuyvesant Town many times in 2015-2016 (until he got sick there, then Woof Play & Stay in Seattle a bunch of times when we lived there, then resumed his occasional visits to Happy Dogs when we came back to New York in 2018. He used to get his vaccines at Happy Dogs – I just needed to bring him to their daycare and they would handle it and their vet would bill my credit card – and he would also get baths there on the last day of whatever trip I was taking.

The last time he ever boarded at a kennel was Happy Dogs of Williamsburg when we were moving to Brooklyn.

Though he was basically as adaptable as any dog could be, pretty well socialized and agreeable to just about any scenario, I know that he loved staying in kennels a lot, because it gave him a chance to play with an insane number of other dogs, and also a break from me (what dog wants to listen to nonstop history podcasts, anyway?). He basically always came back from a stay at one of the kennels in a pretty good mood and I never observed it directly, but I think the people who worked in the kennels always treated him really well.

After we moved back to New York in 2018 and he hadn’t been to Happy Dogs in about a year and a half, I stopped in with him there one time (on a whim and unannounced) and the lady working at the front desk not only recognized him, but jumped up and exclaimed, “Sharav is back!” I wouldn’t be surprised if she had worked with thousands of dogs – and Sharav was definitely not a regular, since I never routinely sent him to daycare – so that made a big impression on me, and I could always tell that he was delighted to go there because he would wag his tail frantically whenever we passed that block.