Beau quickly established himself as a willing and good
traveler. It was necessary only to say
the word “car” and he was at the door ready to go. Any short hop or long trip did the trick.
He traveled far and wide – to the Mediterranean, to Alsace, to
Austria and Germany – complete with border check of his papers to enter
Germany. Other day trips included the
chateaux of the Loire valley. It was
here, on hilly terrain Beau almost met his waterloo tearing down a hill when
his front feet were going so fast that they gave out and Beau was sent skidding
along the ground, his nose almost ploughing up the turf in front.
Beau’s most notable trip was the annual visit to check out the camps
with the family. This particular summer
John stayed in Paris to work at the Palais du Peuple, a large social
institution in the centre of the city.
After a stop at a couple of camps to visit the staff we left Elizabeth
near Le Chambon-sur-Lignon so she could join her friends as a camper. Eleanor and Glen continued the trip towards
Paris, arriving in the Lyon suburb of Dardilly at the end of the
afternoon. It was clearly too late to
continue on to Paris, so we stopped and checked into the Hotel IBIS in Dardilly.
The hotel was built on a steep hillside. It was four stories high,
with a parking lot and entrance on the third floor level and a smaller lot and
entrance at the main floor level. We
parked the car at the top level and registered for our room, taking the stairs
down to our room on the first floor – note: in France the first is actually the
second floor; the first floor is the ground floor or the rez-de-chaussee
(pavement level) in French.
We fell asleep with the windows open to enjoy the beautiful summer
night. Early in the morning we heard
some movement as Beau stirred. Motivated
by his need for relief, he went to the window and jumped out to find a place on
the hill to do his business. We rolled
over, confident that the faithful dog would regain the room.
About twenty minutes later we heard a scratching at the door. We
were a bit slow to recognize the signal and respond. As we opened the door the pooch greeted us
with a stare as if to ask why it took so long for us to open up the door to him. Unable to come back through the window – the
jump up precluded such an entry- he had gone to the entrance, either on the
ground or third floor, walked into the hotel and taken the stairs to find our
corridor and come to the room.
We were quite flabbergasted by his ingenuity and spoke words of lavish
praise to the dog, saluting his intelligence and creativity. Beau looked at us, a mixture of bemusement
and disgust. The only thing he wanted to
know was when breakfast would be served.
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| Word Guild Award 2011 |
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| Word Guild Award 2009 |
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