Quote: Marcia Blum

She's 9 months old. I crate her at home, but not during the day anymore since she can spend the day out in the yard when I am at work. She's great at night from about 9:30 to at least 6:00--but that's at night...

She is in her crate for short periods during the day when I am at home.

I guess that I have just never stretched out those daytime periods.

When are you going? If you have some time, just start crating her during the day slowly increasing the time until she's used to at least 4-5 hours. That way, you can take a break mid-way through the day to go back to the room and take her out for a walk/break before doing more skiing.

Just wanted to say thanks for the advice. Just got back from my trip (urg....9 hour drive *falls over*) and it was great! My pup was great, perfectly comfortable and quiet in his crate in the hotel room, the hotel staff loved him (we got a coupon for next year...we won't have to pay the pet fee!). The hotel (A Hilton) was SUPER pet friendly, as it turns out quiet dogs are allowed free reign of the hotel provided they aren't aggressive or destructive. During the late night hours of the convention when things quieted down a bit (with hotel and con staff permission of course) I tried him out down by my dealer's table, after a few minutes of exploration he curled up with his bully stick and hung out quiet and well behaved by my table. The con photographer fell in love with him so he got to play around the photoshoots. He was even given costumes...we've got "zombie dog" from Resident Evil posing with characters from the game, I'm waiting for the pictures to be emailed to me, we've also got "Batdog" taking on the Joker with his treat ball of justice.

Over all...it was so easy and cheap to bring him, I think he'll be going to other conventions. He really seemed to enjoy it, he likes people and having him behind the table gives him a chance to be invisible for the rest of the time. Our next convention he could potentially come to is in June/July but we have plenty of dog-friendly craft fairs between now and then for practice.

We got the perfect room by the stairs at the end of the hall far from the noise and action (elevators were SUPER noisy and rocky, after two rides up and down I decided to spare him the trauma). We were on the 4th floor so not a long walk. The towel under the crate did wonders for the shedding). The only issue we had was with housekeeping one of the days, she ignored the "beware of dog" and "do not disturb" signs on the door, came in while I was there and Ryuk went into "who the heck are you?" mode but quieted on command.

oh, and the USB drive on the collar serves two purposes 1) provide valuable information if he was to get lost 2) to delight computer geeks young and old XD

USB drive? Cool Idea!!