I’ve taken care of animals since I was 13 starting with horses. I worked at the horse barn, a dog kennel, UD farm (while I got my BS in Animal Science) leading to my first career as a zookeeper. I joke about the huge amount of 💩 I’ve picked up in my life.

In our married life we’ve always had pets, we had up to 5 animals in the house at one time (3 cats, 2 dogs). In the last year or so we’ve had a few discussions about the 2 remaining dogs being our last pets. We’re not in a rush to be pet-less but we’d like to experience not having the responsibility of finding care for trips, getting home in time to let them out, and picking up 💩.

Very recently we had to say our goodbyes to Daisy, leaving us with our now only dog Otto. This decision was not easy, and very hard to follow through on. I’m grateful we had the ability to make the decision before it became an emergency.

The sadness I’m feeling at losing her is intertwined with fear in the reality of my uncertain future. I don’t know if I’ll be around to deal with outcomes of decisions being made now. Will I even get to experience the freedom of not having pets?

We’ve camped several times in the past, usually tent camping with a bath house nearby. I have always wanted to retire and spend our time traveling in a small’ish RV. We spent 4 days camping in a cabin last week as a gift from For Pete’s Sake (another post to come on this). Many of the sites were filled with seasonal rentals of various sized trailers or campers. It was fun to see them and talk about what we liked or didn’t based on what we could see on the outside. But many times while walking or driving around I was wondering if this was our future now.

It feels harder now to know how to plan for our future.