So, here I am, standing in an awful motel, covered in orange juice in rural Virginia.  You can’t make this stuff up… Let me back up for a second and start at the beginning.  My friend, Cindy, and I decided to go to the clicker expo in Nashville, TN to learn some new dog training skills.  As I wanted to bring Uluru, I somehow convinced Cindy to forego her plane ticket for a 12-hour drive to Nashville.  We arrived, exhausted, at the Sheraton in Nashville, where I forked over my credit card.  As the concierge rang it through, she mentioned the non-refundable $75 pet fee that we would incur upon checking in.  My immediate thought was: man, I hope that Uli doesn’t get stressed or sick and have diarrhea in the room.  Cindy had an audible thought that made said concierge cock her head much the way a dog would when asked if they would like to go for a walk or a ride in the car; “Do you have to pay a deposit for children too?”, Cindy said, “because people are way more likely to mess things up than dogs.”. Thinking that she probably just jinxed us and that Uluru would surely puke, have explosive diarrhea, or worse yet, both; I shook my head, grabbed our keys, and we went to the room to settle in. The next few days were great.  Uli worked well at the conference, I got to be a proud dog trainer with an awesome working dog, we ate good Bar-b-q, learned a lot, and had some good laughs.  And best of all, no diarrhea explosion…phew. Finally, it was time to go home, back into the car for 12 hours.  We decided to drive for approximately half of the trip, and stop for the night in a hotel.  But the trip was riddled with traffic and we were exhausted, so we stopped at the first pet friendly hotel that we could find…the Days Inn, Abingdon VA. Now, this was one of those, Bates Motel-type hotels where all of us have undoubtedly stayed at some point while on a road trip.  The kind where you wear flip flops in the shower and feel things crawling on you in the night.  Uluru immediately started itching when we got into the hotel, and didn’t stop scratching until wen left.  But there were beds, and a shower, and we were exhausted, so we crashed. So, you are probably wondering, ok, Nicole, tell us about proofing stays…well, here you go. It was the next morning, around 7:30.  We had our stuff packed in the car, and I was going to walk back to the lobby and hand in our keys.  I took Uluru with me, walked her to the desk, placed her in a sit-stay, and handed the key to the woman working at the desk (in doing so, I’m pretty sure I woke her up). I looked over and realized that there was a continental breakfast laid out (well, sort of), and a couple sitting at the only table in the lobby/dining room, eating waffles and talking about whatever folks talk about in rural Virginia.  Uluru was obediently holding her sit-stay.  I decided to grab us a couple of oj’s for the road, never fathoming what would come next… I grabbed two to go cups, filled them with orange juice, and picked up a lid.  I placed the lid over the top of the first cup and pushed down.  And then it happened…in a very Incredible Hulk-type movement, I obliterated the cup.  Oh, yeah, I crushed it.  And there I stood,  in a shower of oj,  juice running down my hands and my jeans, remnants of the crushed cup still in my hand, jaw dropped. Not 5 seconds later, probably wondering what was taking so long, Cindy walked into the lobby, dropped her jaw, then burst into a hysterical fit of laughter and yelled, ” Napkins!”. We spent the next few minutes frantically sopping up orange juice with crappy paper napkins, wile everyone else in the lobby acted like we weren’t there.  It was almost like we were in a time warp.  Nobody moved, offered to help, or even laughed at us.  They just kept on talkin’ about fishin’, or sleeping behind the desk, or doing whatever!!!  At one point, Cindy asked the desk clerk if she had a mop, and she replied incredulously, “No.”. But she did get us a dry washcloth. We finally had the place cleaned up, and got ready to walk out.  As we were walking out, I looked back, and saw Uluru, still sitting frozen in the place where I had left her about 10 minutes earlier, looking terrified that I would forget to release her from her sit-stay and that she would be doomed to stay in that horrible motel lobby without us.  I looked back and called, “Take A Break”, and she left her stay as if we had shot her out of a gun.  As much as I wanted out of there, I stopped for a minute and thought, thank God I practice so much stay! So, the moral of the story is, always make sure you proof your commands in all kinds of distracting situations.  Sometimes, we get so caught up in teaching fun tricks or challenging behavior sequences that we neglect our foundation obedience.  So take some time today to work on real-life commands like stay and come.  You never know where it may come in handy. …Oh, and beware the free continental breakfast…