Yesterday I was in the city house with the family. I was helping out with some chores before I returned to the suburbs, like laundry and cooking.

At one point, I thought I was alone. Everyone was either not home or busy someplace in the basement. Even Tucker was quiet…

I went to the bedroom and began to strip the bed. They were expecting a family member to spend the night and I wanted to put on fresh sheets.

I dumped the sheets in the laundry basket out in the hall, turned around to enter the bedroom again and saw this:

Maybe he thought he was helping, but truth be told, he wasn’t being very helpful. 🙃

Tucker was very unhappy that I moved out last year. I still come back and stay over with the family as wanted or needed, but I don’t live there permanently anymore. I’m happy with the arrangement, but it’s an evolving circumstance dictated by a lot of external forces which are neither here nor there at the moment. The point is, Tucker hates my overnight bag or suitcase and gives me very sad puppy eyes when I get ready to return to the suburbs.

I spend a lot of time with him when I’m in the city. He has no reason to give me all these elaborate guilt trips (as if I’m not already feeling guilty enough…) I enjoy the walks we do together (mostly). I am, after all, a professional dog walker, meaning I walk other people’s dogs for income. Tucker knows this too, because he often has to share me with other dogs, especially when I’m dog sitting. He’s had to share his house with Nessie and Reya, which he loved because they loved him too, but with Sadie the French Bulldog things didn’t go quite as well. She is already 9 and had a bit of an alpha mentality, which Tucker found confusing. He’s everyone’s friend, how can she not like him?

Well, she wasn’t used to sharing her humans with another dog, so to give Tucker some peace of mind I took her to the suburbs with me for the week. Here’s a thing I posted to Instagram when I had her with me:

One day a few weeks ago I took Tucker for a walk in the nearby park when we saw this tree completely hacked apart by a Beaver. Tucker was sniffing there for a long time…

He enjoys walks very much, and has his routine regardless whether I’m visiting or not. Typically the first walk of the morning he does with the kids’ dad, and the late afternoon or early evening walk typically gets done by my 17 year old son. My daughter sometimes walks Tucker, and she does his bath time, teeth brushing and command training. They also play together quite a bit.

When my daughter has a work shift at local bakery, someone typically walks her to work and home again. If I’m in the city I do it with Tucker, so he often gets extra walks in during the day. He also gets lunchtime walks in when I’m there, mainly because I like to get outside and away from the clutter.

The rest of the time, he’s perfectly content to lie around on the couch.

If things are really busy and/or people are sick, etc, I take Tucker with me to my mom’s place in the suburbs where he has a similar routine. Mom likes doing the morning walk with him, and as an avid gardener, whenever she’s outside, he’s out there with her *helping*. I do the rest of the walks, often the mid-day and evening one, but then I shut the door to my bedroom overnight. He’s not thrilled with that, but prefers to sleep on my mom’s bed anyway. I think I bounce around too much when I sleep which disturbs his beauty rest… 😃

Grandma and Tucker have their own specialized bedtime routine. She has a special blanket for him and he snuggles up against her leg… I don’t know. I like my peace at night in bed; he knows this and seems perfectly happy to share the bed with grandma.

So you see, Tucker the Beagle hound is living the life of a king. 🙂

Thank you for reading my post today! See you in the comments.