How many people can say they have driven coast to coast, let alone how many dogs? Molsie has that claim to fame and the pictures to back it up. Pretty good considering he would get violently car sick as a puppy. Pooh and barf are very hard to get out of the little leather perforation details of car seats so it is with great relief that I can say without a doubt it is possible to clean and fumigate! That being said it would have been very sad if he didn’t get use to driving because every weekend we would take the hour and twenty minute drive to go to his favorite place, our country house.

It would have also curtailed what turned out to be a lifelong adventure for him in the way of road trips. Something my husband and Molson had a great fondness for. Molson because he wasn’t being left behind and my husband because he loved to drive, anywhere, without direction, just because…me I went along for the rides.

We first realized that Molson was brilliant and a great traveling companion when we went on one of our rambling summer road trips. The kids were in camp so they did not join us as we headed east towards the Gaspe and through New Brunswick. These trips were always done at a moment’s notice, my husbands, and always with a cooler full of party sandwiches, fruit and drinks. The gap between the back seat and the front was filled in with something and covered with blankets so that Molson had one large surface to lie on and could easily put his head between us in the front seat and watch the road, a position he often took. Check out his picture!

Anyways on this particular trip I believe somewhere in New Brunswick we had to sneak Molson into a motel that didn’t allow dogs. This was because we had been traveling for hours without finding any motel, let alone one that would let in your dog. My husband asked for a room that would allow us to park right at the door so we could keep an eye on our vehicle which in truth was because we wanted to be as close as possible to the room so Molson could sneak in without the management seeing him.

They were probably concerned that dogs might have accidents on their carpet, I was more concerned with 20/20’s reports of what you can usually find with a blue light on the bed can’t even contemplate what would be on the carpet! I was also wondering what critters may hop onto Molsie’s fur and have to thankfully report that has never ever been a realization.

So we pulled into the parking slot right at the sliding back door to our room, my husband went in through the front door and opened up the sliding doors while I had stayed in the car with Molsie and waited until the coast was clear and Molsie scampered out of the car and straight into the room. When the time came that he had to pee we slid open the sliding door and here is where we show Molsie’s brilliance, there was a wee little bush right outside the door, Molsie put two paws out of the door onto the small patio lifted his hind leg and peed onto the bush and then backed up into the room. Brilliant I told you! He apparently understood every word we had said, my husband and I laughed ourselves silly! On a side note right after that trip we learned there is a book which lists pet friendly hotels and that forever became a traveling bible of sorts!

On a very side note it was on this trip when we came over the hill leaving the border crossing from New Brunswick into Maine was when we had the realization that the Americans had a good laugh over what land they had, it was as if you stepped out of Dorthy’s house and into the land of Oz, but I digress!

Then there was the time we took Molson to B.C. for salmon fishing on the Campbell River, definitely something that was not on my bucket list. For me the thought of being stuck on a boat with nowhere to pee for hours is tantamount to torture, so says the woman who gave birth to two children and hasn’t slept through the night since! That was the only concern of my husband, it never occurred to him that maybe bringing Molson along onto the boat may cause problems.

Oh Molsie was terrific, got onto the boat like a trouper as we motor boated onto the choppy waters. The salmon were apparently not biting and if we had just been there a week before they would have been “jumping into our boat!” that is according to the Deliverance fishing guide who was cleaning his nails with a fish gut encrusted hunting knife! He made me feel much better when I finally landed the first catch of the day only to watch in horror as the guide clubbed it to death in front of me and tossed it back into the water, apparently I had caught a small shark which is considered fish food!

I think it was about at this time that Molson started to get seasick, the poor dog turned green if a golden could turn green and started those great gut wrenching retching heaving noises. Now because it was our beloved Molson this great fishing trip was cut short immediately so instead of it being a whole day it turned into merely a 3 hour excursion! As our guide steered us back to shore we passed several other boats with guides and fishing tourists, also without salmon on board, and probably hearing the same line of “…last week”! Well our guide thought a seasick dog was THE funniest thing he had ever seen and had to tell everyone possible what was transpiring on his boat!  Glad someone had fun that day!

We have driven up north as far as you can physically drive, all the way through the Arctic Circle and up to Dawson City. There we discovered amazing food, a funky creatively color painted town with huge sunflowers of every imaginable color and a vet that will be forever blessed!

At some point in our visit to Dawson City Molson started gulping and trying to eat every blade of grass he could. His distress grew with every moment as he was frantically trying to eat grass and throw up. We phoned the only vet in Dawson City who thankfully was in town at the time who immediately knew what had transpired. He was at our hotel room within minutes and proved there are dedicated, talented, caring people everywhere in this world you only have to look!

Molson had swallowed a filament from a foxtail plant that grew in abundance all over Dawson City! One of its long hair like pieces of plant wrapped itself around something in his throat and was slowly strangling him and either it or the distress it was causing Molson would eventually kill him if it wasn’t removed. He needed an immediate operation to remove it. The kicker was it was to be performed right there in the hotel room on the bed and I was to assist. My husband was to sit in the corner with his arm covering his face, the big baby!

Molson was first to be injected with something that would paralyze him and then something to slow down his breathing, I was to keep his mouth pried open and his tongue out of the way while the Doctor who came equipped and obviously performed this more than once went to work on his throat. The fun was after finally managing to capture and untangle this nasty filament and then remove it from his throat we then had to bring Molson back to the land of the living. So he had to have another injection that would do several things, cause Molson to go into convulsions which I would have to help keep him restrained and Molson’s hearing would become extremely sensitive to sound for a while.

And true to his warning Molson’s head started to lift off of the bed and slam down, this went on for quite a while, the blinds had been closed and the lights turned off and we all spoke in whispers. The Vet stayed the entire afternoon monitoring his breathing and heart rate as the medication worked itself out of his system. At the end of the day when Molson was a tired but comfortable puppy and the vet was preparing to leave we asked him how much we owed him and were told $75.00 for absolutely everything…I know we couldn’t believe it either!

The next day we continued our adventure going up the famed Dempster Highway, hydroplaning on gravel close to the highways edge which wove its way through terrain straight out of a Jean M. Auel novel where you could easily visualize the woolly mammoth traversing through. Arriving in Inuvik and staying at the famed Mackenzie Hotel where I have to say I had the world’s best lobster bisque soup next to Calgary’s old San Remo restaurant, whose owner Drew had been a master chef and who I also believe has since moved back to the east coast, Calgary’s loss!

Anyways it was in Inuvik where Molson and I learned firsthand how Ravens could become figures in legends. Huge, black and eerily humanlike in the way they conversed between each other, I feared that Molson would be swooped down upon and carried away as several of these birds would hop from building to building following us on our walk. They also didn’t chirp or caw like normal birds they barked and growled and sounded like they were having discussions amongst themselves, very disconcerting! I no longer look at crows the same way, to me they are just mini versions of their mutant larger brothers, the ravens.

I think of these excursions often and wonder if they ever enter into Molson’s consciousness. Does he remember being chased by black flies the size of birds in Northern Ontario or strolling along Vancouver’s shaded streets, does he remember dipping his paws into the Beauford Sea or the unique smell of the air in Brandon, Manitoba?

These days Molson doesn’t take road trips and I am afraid his next one will be to his permanent resting place, a location in the country where both Dawn and Tawny can be found and hopefully will lovingly welcome him into the next life. It is freaking me out that it is winter because how do they dig? Whose mind works like this? And truthfully the way he is eating and has settled in to his physical restrictions, the way he smacks us and bosses us around these days he may surprise us all and be around longer than we had thought which is aok with me.

Molsie’s big adventures these days is going from room to room, we wheel barrel him to different locations as he decides where he wants to be and like always it is usually where I am. Or when he wants to change positions he likes to get off the bed go into the next room stop to look down the hallway and get a sip of water or sometimes a half a bowl and sometimes just to reach the bowl and then turn around without taking a sip just because he likes the trip. He is still the traveler just takes really mini trips.

He gets excited when he realizes he is going into a different room, his ears perk up and he gets this open mouth smile and he moves himself very quickly towards us with his front legs. He can pull himself to right beside us on the bed in two seconds and loves to throw his head down hard onto us just to tell us he is there.

The one thing he no longer does and it was with sadness when the realization struck me the other day is he no longer wags his tail. I wonder if he realizes that he isn’t wagging his tail because I am sure in his mind he is. He isn’t wagging his tail because he is unhappy it is because of the spinal nerve damage, although when he starts to pooh his tail does twitch giving us a heads up on the blessed event!

There is one sweet point I should mention, I truly believe when he sleep he is visiting all of these past places and running in fields of memory because he moves his legs in pantomime. Molson is still the travelin’ dog it’s just that he does it in his dreams.

Source: Molsie's blog of Animal Assistance Products, creator of the Hip Hammock & Barrel Booster