We were in Toronto to promote Mila’s Journey, a movie about Mila’s life, so the first thing we did was set up the stand at the convention center. Of course, Chico helped as much as he could.

Here’s he’s practicing “down-stay with distractions”

And here he and I are figuring out that there is barely enough room at the stand for the human staff, let alone our canine support unit.

Since there was so little room in the stand, it seemed best to put him in a boarding kennel. I booked him into a quite fine place, Parker Pet Care – currently being run by the third generation of family Parker. Finding the Parkers was a bit of luck – on the way to the supermarket we passed a veterinary office and I pulled in, thinking that they might have a recommendation for a boarding kennel. They had brochures from Parker and one other place which was more of a board and train situation and not what I was looking for. So, I picked Parker. They said Chico was a model guest. When we were reunited, I found that he had barked himself hoarse, so I guess they have a slightly different definition of perfection than I do. But he was fine, and as usual, he about turned himself inside out when I came to get him.

Meanwhile, we gave up the camper van and rolled up the tents one last time and moved to a lovely, just lovely, B&B called Banting House Inn. I was under the impression it wasn’t especially dog friendly, and Mila and Christina had already stayed there for a night and said I would love it, and Chico was already in the kennel, so I happily went with the master plan. Boy, was that a good move on my part.

A lovely old house built for a very rich family in the late 1800s or early 1900s.

There are lovely gardens front, back, and side of the house.

The interior of the house is elegant, with more carved, polished oak than you can shake a stick at.

We arrived late in the evening and since host Scott has to be up early to make breakfast, he left our keys in the mailbox, with a note that started “welcome home” – how lovely! Our room was comfortable, breakfast was delicious and plentiful and the other guests were all interesting to talk with, Scott helped us find what we needed in the neighborhood, he let us do laundry (we had just spent a week camping), and, had Chico been with us, Scott would have welcomed him as well – even inviting Chico to stay at the house while we went out for the day. Scott said, “I could use the company while I clean.”

So, when I go back to Toronto to explore the about 150 interesting ethnic restaurants I saw, Chico is going to stay at Banting House Inn with me.

The next post will be the last about this trip and I haven’t really found a place to write about recycling in Canada, so I’m going to do it now. It was universally easy to separate recyclables from each other and from trash. Almost everywhere I was had a “trash” set up like this:

Waste, paper, other recyclables – three categories. So easy to recycle you’d feel a fool if you didn’t comply. Note to my native land: Model this behavior.