June figured out we were taking her about the time Wes put her bed in the back seat. She stood by the CR-V and howled one long beagle howl, which in our house means either "deer" or "I am coming and you cannot stop me."
Most of our trips she spends with Tonya in Pembroke, and she is happy there. But I wanted one weekend this summer where the dog came too, and that meant finding a place that would actually have us.
Finding a cabin that takes a dog
A lot of listings say "pet friendly" and then the details say one small dog under 25 pounds, no beagles, or a $150 pet fee. June is a beagle mix and weighs about 28 pounds, so I read every listing all the way down. I ended up with a small one-bedroom cabin on a wooded lot near the Uwharrie National Forest, about an hour and a half from our house, for $105 a night with taxes included, plus a flat $40 pet fee for the stay.
Before I booked, I called and asked three questions: was the pet fee per night or per stay, was there a fenced yard, and were dogs allowed on the furniture. Per stay, no fence, and no. Fair enough. We brought her own blanket and a tie-out cable, and she slept on her bed by the woodstove like she owned the place.
The cabin had a screened porch, a little kitchen with a two-burner stove, a decent shower and a gravel drive that June investigated for most of an hour. No television, which neither of us missed.
We drove out Friday morning, after a slow breakfast and one last walk around the yard so June could tell the squirrels goodbye. The Uwharries are old, worn-down mountains, more like big wooded hills, and the trails are rocky and shaded. Saturday we did a short loop of a few miles in the national forest with June on her leash, nose to the ground the entire way. She bayed at one deer and one stump that she was certain was a deer.
Saturday afternoon it clouded up and thundered, and June got under the bed and shook. Wes sat on the floor with her for most of an hour. Those are the parts of bringing a dog nobody puts in the pictures.
Sunday we drove the long way home past Lake Tillery and stopped at an overlook so June could stretch her legs.
What a dog really adds to a weekend
I kept track, because that is what I do.
The $40 pet fee was the biggest single line. Choice of lodging shrank, since only a handful of places in our price range took a dog her size. Long sit-down meals were out, because we can't leave her alone in a strange cabin to bark at the neighbors, so we ate at the cabin and on the porch. Our pace slowed, since trails take longer when every tree needs smelling. And on the other side of the ledger, we didn't pay Tonya's usual "fee" of a bag of dog food and a tank of gas.
So the dog cost us about $40 in pet fee and saved us about $55 in dog food and Tonya's gas. Call it a wash, money-wise. The real cost is that you plan a dog's weekend instead of your own, and the real gain is watching a nine-year-old beagle run up a trail like she was two.
The numbers
We ate entirely out of our own freezer and pantry: chicken thighs, corn, a pound cake my mother sent home with me, and coffee. I count that against the regular grocery money since we would have eaten it at home anyway, so the trip account only paid for the cabin and the gas.
- Cabin, 2 nights at $105 (tax included): $210
- Pet fee, per stay: $40
- Gas, about 170 miles round trip, about 6.1 gallons at $2.95: $18
- Total: $268
That is $32 under the target. June slept the whole ride home and most of Monday. Wes said she'd earned it, which is a lot of words for him.
