Togetherness
On
the Road With Babs and Sweetie
by Nydia Parries
Not surprisingly, as Babs Daitch sits down to talk about
her Yorkshire Terrier, Sweetie, after returning home from
a tour of Mount Shasta, she gleefully mentions that she
is petting her five-pound friend at the moment. “I
might be considered obsessive at this point with her,”
she admits, “I try to adjust my schedule and take
her everywhere.”
Babs is the perfect person to share
her life experiences for this month’s Passport.
A tour guide for lesbian and gay vacations, she’s
a self-described gypsy who’s always on the move.
Fortunately her “Great Dane in
a small package” is almost always able to come
along to make trips less lonely.
“It’s sickening when you think
of the fact that my dining partner more often than not
is my dog,” Babs chuckles. There is an elaborate
dining ritual for smuggling Sweetie into restaurants
in her carrying case. “Because Sweetie is not a
yapper, I can always be assured that she will stay quiet,”
Babs explains. “If I’m in a restaurant, she’ll
know when the food’s coming before the waiter even
brings it to the table. She starts to scratch the bag—she
won’t bark. I zip open the top just enough for
my hand to fit in, and start petting her to calm her
down and eventually start throwing pieces of food in
there. I’m sure people have wondered what I’m
doing under the table. I hope they don’t think
I’m playing with myself,” she muses.
“Sweetie has been very fortunate—she
gets to go to restaurants, jazz clubs, movies. I went
up to the Ashland, Oregon Shakespeare Festival right
after the tour with Sweetie and she went to see A Midsummer
Night’s Dream. She sat in her bag the whole time
and didn’t say a word. She’s more cultured
now than she was when we left.”
The purpose of Babs’ most recent
trip to Oregon was to take a group of gay and lesbian
travelers to climb Mount Shasta. It was during this
trip that she had one of the most difficult times trying
to conceal Sweetie. “The first day the maid came
to the door at 8 o’ clock in the morning. I was
sharing a room with some other climbers, and one had
gone out of the room. There was a knock on the door
and I thought it was the same person who left the room,
but it turned out to be the maid. Sweetie was in my
right hand, and I opened the door with my left, and
she kind of saw the dog. I shut the door really quickly
and said ‘No, we don’t want any service!’
and she heard a bark. The maid ran to her boss and told
her we had a dog. They called the room and said ‘The
maid saw a dog’ and we said, ‘Oh no, that’s
just a little mascot stuffed animal that we carry. They
said, ‘What about the barking?’ and we said
we had Animal Planet on.”
Babs was beside herself when she explained
that, “For the whole week they kept calling different
rooms and saying ‘We know you have a dog in there.’
It was the funniest thing. They were constantly looking
for the dog, but they were never able to confront me
with the fact that I did have a dog, so she did a good
job, Sweetie. I really don’t recommend that. That
was probably one of the most uncomfortable times for
me when taking the dog.”
Indeed, Sweetie is one of the most well-traveled
and loved dogs in the country. “She’s traveled
with me cross-country from Sonoma all the way down to
Key West,” Babs says with pride. The two have sneaked
into too many hotels, airplanes, and countries to count.
“I call her my little contraband.”
[Updated:
April, 2008]
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On
the Road, A Mini Gay Film Fest