We went to Minneapolis this past weekend with our weimaraner, Zelda, for a family wedding.  This trip was prepared for by multiple lawyers handling negotiations for our dog to stay in a somewhat pet-friendly downtown skyscraper hotel.  That’s one small step for dog, one giant leap for lawyer-kind.

It was quite an adventure, starting with the careful maneuvering required to get all our stuff up 15 floors, including the dog’s crate while the puppy proceeded to wiggle everywhere.  She was pretty shaky in the elevator.  I guess from a dog’s perspective it’s pretty freaking scary when the floor begins to move under you.  You do also get some really interesting looks from people who don’t expect a 55 pound dog in a somewhat-fancy hotel lobby.  (No, that sure isn’t a chihuahua.)

The second bit of adventure was figuring out where the heck the dog should go to the bathroom.  There was absolutely zero grass outside, but with a few minutes reconnaissance we did managed to find a little round park.  The only problem?  Well, the park was literally crawling with rabbits.  I don’t know if they were some kind of mutant strain that survives in a downtown area, but they sure made it hard for the dog to do anything but want to hunt.

Apart from these small challenges, the dog appeared to really like hanging out in the city.  There were many strange things to smell and an over-abundance of people to lick.  She seemed to have a good built-in detector to recognize the whackos and generally seemed to think it was a blast.

On Saturday, I put on my tuxedo and proceeded to take the dog out to pee right before the wedding service.  Nothing like a guy walking a weimaraner in a tuxedo through a downtown area!  Of course, it got even weirder when I got back at the hotel with the dog….The entire Detroit Lions football team was waiting to use the hotel elevators.  Yeah, the Lions were staying in the same hotel as us at the same time we needed to get up to the wedding service.

At this point, I said “excuse me” to a dozen very large people and shimmied through what looked like a defensive line through the elevator.  The puppy followed closely in my wake with her tail thumping as fast as possible.  We decided to run up the 15 floors in the stairs because the wait for the elevator looked to be about 20 minutes long.  The puppy wasn’t crazy about the idea of going into the stairwell but a couple of the football players made encouraging noises like, “It’s OKAY puppy, you can do it.”  Good stuff.

Through the weekend, the puppy did indeed get used to the elevator and peeing on concrete, but it was a bit more stressful than we had anticipated.  Of course, I’ll never forget the puppy getting attention from the NFL players.  That’s a story that makes the whole thing worthwhile.