The couple who were on a climate crisis camping trip in Ballydehob messaged me in a desperate state.
‘We’re cold and wet! Please can we come?’ It was after 7 p.m. and she had asked for a two-night stay, specifying she would be bringing a dog. We do allow dogs, but we make clear that we can only take small ones because we have to maintain some sort of non-dog smell to the rooms.
Added to which, people who take their dogs with them everywhere are the worst. They think they are interesting but they are, in fact, colossally boring.
I have never met one dog-traveller who is anything other than a pain in the proverbial. We once took our little spaniel Cydney to France and once was enough. We learned with that one trip that travelling with your dog is asking too much of people, and so, as we’re not egomaniacs, we stopped doing it.
I felt sorry for the dog, for my heart aches for the dogs of lefties and other idiots who take dogs everywhere
‘Do you take pets?’ said this woman who was attempting to camp in Ballydehob, mecca of the left, when she first messaged me on the booking system. I had agreed to take her last minute because she was wet and cold in her environmental teepee, doing her dance and climate action workshop.
Yes, that’s right, come to the home of the right-wing Trump supporters with oil-fired heating for a few nights of hot water when your pro-Palestine dance and movement workshop has worn you down, after probably one night.
But to specify she wanted to bring ‘pets’ was too much.
‘What sort of pet?’ I asked, for I really did not like the generalisation. Was she going to bring a ferret, or a companion llama, which she travelled with for emotional support for her various made-up afflictions? She did not reply for an hour, so it was gone 8 p.m. by the time I learned that it was a dog.
No specificity as to size. ‘What sort of dog is it please?’ Another hour passed, and I could only imagine she was looking for alternative accommodation where the host did not ask such impertinent questions about her fur baby.
But after another hour she replied: ‘It’s an old labrador, very well behaved. She is very tired and won’t run around.’
I could have said that very old labrador is nice, but very old labrador smells, and I have a responsibility to my next guests in that room, which has carpet.
But it was now very late, and I felt sorry for the dog, for my heart aches for the dogs of lefties and other idiots who take dogs everywhere. Fancy being dragged to a climate crisis love-in on a campsite in Ballydehob. One can only imagine the horrors this labrador had witnessed.
So I said yes, and she then took another hour to reply, before announcing they were on their way.
One last thing she then messaged: ‘We’ll need a bathtub.’ No, I said, you have a showerin that en suite. Do you mean you want to bath the dog? Because you’ll have to use the downstairs dog wash. No reply.
At 10 p.m., they drove through the gate. They got out of the car with a limping black lab and they all hobbled towards the house, she silver-haired, he tall and bent over with the effects of dirty leftie glamping.
They came in, refusing to smile at me and without a word of thanks for the late admittance, or the taking of a dog. They had to push the dog up the stairs, by shoving on its backside as it floundered. I showed them to their room and went to find a dog water bowl. No thank you for that.
They shut their door and a few minutes later I heard the hot water system roaring as the showering began. He went out later to walk the dog and left the front door wide open all night.
The next morning they came down at eight, and as they eyed the breakfast buffet I offered them food for the labrador.
They said she might enjoy some ‘wet food’. I bet she would, I thought, for she had probably been managing with vegan dog biscuits, a kind of cruelty that should lead to someone having their dog taken into care.
I got the lab a nice big bowl of dog meat and she wolfed it down gratefully.
Then the woman announced that she – as in the woman – only ate gluten-free bread. ‘Don’t have any, sorry. You arrived late. No time for me to get speciality items.’ She eyed the milk. ‘No oat milk,’ I said.
When I cleared their bowls, I noticed she had put orange juice on her granola. Get a grip of yourself, I wanted to say, but didn’t.
They then left without a word of thanks, revealing they had booked only one night. Inside their room, I stripped the bed, which was covered in dog hair. The floor was strewn with vegan kibble.
But nothing prepared me for what was in the bedroom wastepaper bin. A bag of dog poo. A tightly tied plastic bag of poo in the bedroom bin. Talk about stupidity and ego. I really do not want to give these dog-travellers another inch.
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