Moonlighting as a prison guard

That title is what it feels like these days, walking around with too many keys on my chain. Like I’m working as a prison guard… don’t prison guards keep a lot of keys on their chains? Think Shawshank Redemption… lol 😜

Because I look after people’s dogs I have keys to their houses. I also have keys to my own house, obviously. We have three doors and two garage doors so I carry a few keys with me on a daily basis.

My parents’ house has several doors too and I carry those keys with me as well.

Then there’s the car keys. I keep the van key on me at all times because that’s the car I drive 90% of the time, but if I use the other car, then I gotta remember to pick up its key, too.

Lordy.

But the dog keys…I don’t carry those with me all the time. I only take the one dog key that I need, along with my own front door key. No point in carrying a gazillion keys around with me when I walk those poochies.

To make my life easier, I attach the dog key to my house key to keep them together while I walk. There’s a specific key chain I attach them to.

This all works out fine if all I have is one dog that day, which is usually how it works out. I rarely have more than one dog to deal with at a time.

Except, today I had two dogs. Not at the same time, but it still affected my key situation.

I was asked to pick up Molly sometime in the morning. Molly belongs to humans who are close friends of ours, so I keep her key separate from my other keys because my husband too has permission to enter the house to get the dog like I do. We share the responsibility for Molly.

My client’s dog however is my dog, and I don’t take that key off my house key. I’m the one who is responsible for his walk and no one else is.

Anyway, the reason I’m rambling on about house keys today is because I had to pick up Molly this morning, several hours before I walk my client’s dog. So I grabbed my house key which has the client’s dog key attached to it, and start leaving toward Molly’s house.

Lucky I realized I didn’t have her key on my chain before I got too far. Kind of useless to walk seven blocks to her house only to then have the wrong dog key on me. 🙄

So I went back in and got the third key.

In about a half an hour I’m going to walk my client’s dog. I hope I pick up the correct key this time. Theoretically it’s attached to my house key so unless my brain fries (again) today I should be on my way with the correct key.

Basically what I’m saying is this:

I’m getting a lot of exercise these days. 🙃