The past few months and weeks have all been a little stressful hence some of the silence on here. What with my headaches and really not enjoying my day job due to a host of reasons I was in a pretty miserable place, then up pops a life changing opportunity.
Mr B works for a big American tech company and he has been offered a role in the San Francisco Bay Area. Now if this opportunity had presented itself 2 years ago we would’ve said yes without any thought; we had money in the bank from our Oxford house sale and nothing to stop us but 2 years on, we’ve bought a house, a proper adult grown up house and now have Huxley to consider so we had lots and lots of thinking to do and a million and one questions to be answered before we could make a decision, and most of those questions revolved around Huxley.
Huxley to a lot of people may just be a dog, but that little dog is our world, we chose to have him and wanted him to have the best life we can give. He goes to daycare when I’m in the office, the daycare team adore him and when he’s not with them he’s with us and rarely left home alone. He goes to gun dog training, that dog has a more active social life than me, so taking him away from all that he loves was a hard decision along with the big question of how we get him over to the states.
The first positive is that America is part of the Pet Passport program and Huxley has a passport so no need for quarantine. Mr B looked at the option of a private jet that was on an ‘empty leg‘ sadly it was out of our budget being a trans-Atlantic flight, but for Europe it can be cheaper than you might think so maybe a sneaky trip might be on the cards at some point for me and Mr B. The other option was the QM2 to New York as it has kennels and a kennel master on board but the kennels are booked a year in advance and I don’t think Huxley would like being in kennels for 5 days even if I did visit him every day, all day. Then there would be the weeks drive east to west coast which didn’t bear thinking about. So we did our research, spoke to others that have taken their dogs on long haul travel and decided he would have to flying, so the 3 of us are off!
If you’re gonna move your dog anywhere, San Fransisco is the place, it claims to be the worlds friendliest city for dogs and doggy daycare was invented there.
It’s been so hard making the decision but life is short and I didn’t want to be thinking “what if?” a few years down the line. There will be so many opportunities work wise for me once I’m settled in too. Now is a really exciting, if slightly scary time! My notice at work has gone in, family and friends now know, putting the announcement on Facebook defiantly made it all feel real.
The other big question was the house, well we don’t tend to do things by halves so it’s being sold! This move could be forever so the thought of trying to sell, with renters in from other side of the Atlantic would just be way too stressful. So the ‘For Sale’ sign will be up in a few days and the countdown to a new adventure on the West Coast will start. We aim to be there by November so I have a few months yet, oh and one last holiday in Cap Ferret.
I’m very, very excited, I think California and I will get along nicely, now where’s my skateboard?…
xSJ
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