Welcome to the world of Uitlaat Service in Holland! Because the Dutch love their dogs so much there is an entire (regulated) industry built up around meeting the doggy day care challenge. Our friends Sean and Sandra had used a couple of different uitlaat services for their dog Clover, but they didn't really have a good recommendation for us because they had a few bad experiences with the ones that they used. Clover has hip dysplacia and the doggy walks can get rather rowdy with 8 different dogs running wild through the woods. Clover frequently came home very sore after the walks and the services were reluctant to give her the extra attention that she needed.
So, I turned to the internet to look up a few of the other local services. And what does a typical guy look for when searching for a doggy walk business on the internet? Price? Location of where they walk the dog? References? Nope, nope, and nope again. Well, don't get me wrong, all of those things matter, but the real decision factor for me was when I saw the pictures posted on each of their websites. I knew immediately that AAI was for us. Adrianna was hot!
So I called her up and we scheduled an "intake" for Sage. Can you believe it? Sage had to go through an interview process to make sure that she was suitable for the uitlaat service. Don't forget, I was going to pay 190 Euros per month to this service to take her out and walk in the woods! Unbelievable!
Well, when Adrianna came to the house that day we could hear her coming more than a block away. Her rickety old blue van came sputtering down the street, pistons pinging and smoke coughing out of the tailpipe. Baying and barking dogs were the only noise louder than the van itself. The van parked in the middle of the street and Adrianna got out to pick up Sage for a test run. I was a little nervous, but Sage seemed to like her so we sent her off like anxious parents on their child's first day of school, wondering if everything would be ok...and hoping that she would behave and be accepted into the service.
It was a nail biting 1 hour, but when Sage got back an hour later, tired, hungry, and stinking like cigarettes, the reports were all good. Adrianne would take Sage on as a customer.
Since that day, there has only been one bad incident with Sage and her uitlaat service (which will have to wait for another post to tell, or maybe even the next book given the amount of story telling material that it provided).
Sage loves her uitlaat!
Even when both Beth and I are working from home, Sage will still go to the front hall around 11.00 and wait for her uitlaat. She wouldn't miss it for anything.
The only problem is that Adrianna finally bought a new van and Sage can't hear it coming down the street anymore. So from 11.00 until Adrianna arrives, Sage barks at every car that comes by, thinking that it is there to take her to the park.
Grappig, toch?
This is the only picture of the old van that I could find. This thing broke down so many times that it was almost funny...except that I would get an SMS at work from Adrianna saying that she couldn't pick Sage up because the van was in the shop again. Beth in Germany. Me in Utrecht. And a wound up dog waiting at home for her uitlaat...argh!!!
But now there is the nice, new snazzy van, complete with window seats for the doggies. You can see that Sage really likes it. Open door! Open door!
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