To the Retreat: What We Found When We Got There
Well, we went.
After months of thinking, planning, questioning whether this was actually something Charlie and Elsie would enjoy, buying what Mike probably considers several hundred million tents and eventually deciding there really was only one way to find out, we packed the car.
And then packed it some more.
The roof box was full. The boot was full. The back seat was arranged so Charlie and Elsie had their usual extended space behind us. There were beds, bedding, food, clothes, a stove and enough equipment to suggest we might actually have been relocating to Devon rather than going away for a few nights.
It was also hot.
Of course it was.
September had apparently decided that our end-of-season camping experiment required another heatwave.
At least I'd put the spare dog water bottles somewhere sensible.
A couple of hours into the journey we stopped at services with a dog exercise area. There were plenty of dogs around, including some having considerably louder opinions about the experience than ours.
Charlie and Elsie noticed them.
And largely carried on.
Charlie came into the services with me, which gave us another version of the Outside World entirely. People everywhere, doors opening and closing, noise and movement, and what seemed like a never-ending procession heading in and out of the toilets.
It reminded me of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, when Ministry workers descend on a public toilet and flush themselves into work.
No flushing ourselves anywhere, thankfully.
Charlie simply sat beside me and watched it all.
Later, walking through the services, a woman actually walked into us.
Mike was behind us and noticed something I couldn't.
Charlie wasn't particularly interested in her, or much of what was happening around him.
He was watching me.
Where I was going. What I was doing. Where we were going next.
Apparently, motorway services were fine.
And perhaps that should have told me something about the week ahead.
Because, of all the things I'd thought about, researched, planned for and put onto imaginary lists, the Outside World wasn't really what caught us out.
Food was.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Making a home
The fenced pitch was one of those things I'd spent quite a lot of time thinking about before we went.
It turned out to be worth it almost immediately.
Once the gate was closed, Charlie and Elsie had a clear boundary. They could investigate while Mike and I unloaded the car and put the tent up without one of us permanently holding two leads.
And the tent really was easy to pitch.
This mattered more than I perhaps realised when I was scoring tents against requirements from the comfort of home. We weren't spending hours constructing their new environment around them. We arrived, put it up and started making ourselves at home.
Elsie helped.
Obviously.
Her contribution was mainly muddy paw prints up the front of the porch, which was particularly useful given that we were considering selling the tent after the trip.
Perhaps she had already voted.
Once everything was in, though, something happened that I'd hoped for but couldn't really plan.
We just lived in it.
The beds went down. The stove went on. Charlie curled up in one of the new donut beds we'd bought because I wondered whether cooler nights might make them want to curl rather than sprawl.
Elsie curled up in hers too.
Sometimes partly in it.
Sometimes apparently attempting to leave it while still technically asleep.
There was a road behind our pitch, a little dog play area beside us and, beyond that, two campervans with several dogs who had quite a lot to say for themselves.
Charlie and Elsie listened.
Elsie occasionally had something to say back.
Then she went back to sleep.
Charlie mostly skipped the commentary and remained curled in his bed.
And that became one of the rhythms of the week.
Charlie watched.
Elsie participated.
They were still completely themselves.
The thing I hadn't planned for
Their first dinner was when the first little question appeared.
Charlie got stuck straight in.
Elsie didn't.
She nudged her bowl around with her nose instead.
I noticed hers wasn't broken up quite as much as Charlie's. Normally that wouldn't particularly matter, but nothing else about where she was eating was normal.
New pitch. New smells. Dogs next door. Road behind us. Canvas walls. The whole Outside World sitting just beyond them.
And Food had once been a big thing for Elsie.
When she first came to live with us, we'd had to think carefully about feeding Charlie and Elsie separately. She had a habit of invading Charlie's space and, like everything else, we'd worked through it together.
These days they happily eat in the same room at home and understand one another's boundaries.
So rather than insisting dinner should work here simply because it worked at home, we changed it.
Charlie ate in the porch. Elsie went outside with Mike. We broke her food up a little more.
She ate.
Then we lit the stove, cooked our korma on the camping stove, warmed naan on top of the wood burner and watched two Boxers curl up beside it.
Home, apparently, could have canvas walls.
Although our own dinner took rather longer to achieve because the new cool box was so bloody efficient that it had refused to defrost it.
Tuesday morning told us the previous evening hadn't just been a first-night oddity.
We tried feeding them inside again, this time on opposite sides of the tent.
Elsie nudged her food around, overturned it and then did something I recognised.
She went towards Charlie and his food.
Old behaviour. Different setting.
So her food went away.
Elsie went outside with Mike and, after some time had passed, her food was presented again. This time, with more space around her, she ate.
Charlie had remained inside, with Elsie completely removed from the situation, but he still didn't return to his food.
His went away too.
Later, because Elsie had eaten and Charlie hadn't, we tried again outside.
Charlie turned his nose up.
So, again, the food went away.
Elsie, naturally, thought she might quite like to have it instead.
She didn't.
We left it for a while. Mike mashed Charlie's food a little more and, later still, presented it again in the place where Elsie had successfully eaten.
This time Charlie ate most of it.
Looking back, we perhaps came close to doing the opposite of what Dog Listening asks of us — because Food had once been difficult between Charlie and Elsie, I could feel myself wanting to solve it.
But we hadn't left bowls lying around. We hadn't coaxed them into eating or allowed one dog to finish the other's meal. Each time somebody walked away, the food went away too. We gave it time before presenting it again.
What changed was the environment.
There wasn't a neat answer for why either of them had hesitated. Perhaps Elsie's approach had unsettled Charlie. Perhaps the unfamiliar surroundings mattered. Perhaps the consistency of the food mattered more here than it did at home. Perhaps several things were overlapping.
Eventually I realised I didn't need to work it all out.
Less is more.
For later meals we simplified things. Outside. Opposite sides of the pitch. Plenty of room.
Same familiar boundaries around Food.
And they ate together quite happily.
Same dogs. Same food. Same principles.
Different environment.
Different answer.
When more space means making the world smaller
Before the trip I'd wondered whether the Outside World would be the difficult bit.
There were certainly moments when it gave us something to think about.
We went to Saunton Sands and had some wonderful stretches of beach. Charlie and Elsie even had some off-lead time.
But “dog friendly” doesn't necessarily mean everyone around you understands what your particular dogs need.
On one narrow approach, a woman was trying to regain control of her off-lead dog and almost careered into us along with it.
Charlie and Elsie weren't entirely sure what to make of either of them.
And then there were the tennis balls.
We removed toys from Charlie and Elsie's shared environment a long time ago. That's something we've consciously managed because of their history together.
So having somebody launch a tennis ball remarkably close to us — inevitably encouraging their dog to come charging into our space after it — isn't something I particularly welcome.
They couldn't know our dogs or their history, of course.
I can know my dogs, though.
After a while I realised the amount of space we had simply wasn't enough.
So the leads went back on.
And that's an interesting thing about creating space.
Sometimes creating more of it actually means making the world smaller.
With the leads clipped back on, Charlie and Elsie had fewer decisions to make. They didn't need to decide where we were going, whether to investigate the next dog or what to do about another tennis ball suddenly arriving in our space.
We led.
They followed.
Less is more.
We moved through the melee until everything began to open up again.
And eventually the grass really was greener.
Albeit sand, not grass.
Fewer people. Fewer dogs. Fewer tennis balls mysteriously arriving in our vicinity.
We had room.
The leads could come off again.
Their world could become bigger again.
And the four of us enjoyed the beach.
Actually being on holiday
That mattered too.
Because somewhere amongst all my observations about Food and the Outside World, I had to remember that we hadn't driven to Devon to conduct a behavioural study.
We were on holiday.
By our second evening the stove was going, the dogs were settled and we were eating homemade Chinese curry and waving sparklers around outside the tent.
There was wine.
Obviously.
Nobody was undertaking a Dog Listening exercise.
We were just together.
And as the days went on, the temporary home we'd planned so carefully simply became where we came back to.
Wednesday morning, however, brought a rather smokier start.
There had been a little warning the previous evening, and by morning it was clear our lovely wood burner wasn't drawing quite as beautifully as it had been.
The flue needed cleaning.
This was not amongst the requirements I'd identified before we left.
Later that day we were heading down the coast to meet Mike's sister Louise. We knew Paignton would have plenty of shops, so we stopped there first in search of some sort of brush that might do the job.
£1.50 later, we were the proud owners of a toilet brush.
It turns out it is remarkably good at cleaning stove pipes.
There are some requirements even MoSCoW doesn't identify until you're standing in Paignton wondering whether a toilet brush will fit up a flue.
It did.
Problem solved.
We carried on to Goodrington, met Louise and spent a long afternoon walking along the seafront and catching up.
There were plenty of dogs around, accompanied by owners with varying interpretations of personal space.
There were also a few moments when I watched Charlie watching somebody and could see he wasn't entirely comfortable.
Interestingly, it wasn't the dog he was assessing.
It was the man.
Charlie has done this before. He's quite capable of deciding that the human at the other end of the lead deserves considerably more assessment than the dog attached to it.
So we noticed.
We didn't need to make anything of it.
We simply managed our world and carried on.
Later we drove over to Cockington Court for a drink, a sit down and a view. Charlie and Elsie had a little explore there too before we eventually dropped Louise home.
It had been a long afternoon.
They'd been brilliant.
Our own little world
Thursday gave us something completely different.
We drove over towards Woolacombe, parked near the edge of the village and walked up to Grunta Beach.
The journey down and the views along the way had already made the outing worthwhile, but when we reached the little cove it felt as though we'd somehow managed to borrow the whole place for ourselves.
The tide was coming in.
So our time there was limited.
It didn't matter.
For a while there was nobody else to think about.
No tennis balls arriving from nowhere.
No unfamiliar dogs wandering into our space.
No need to keep looking for somewhere quieter.
Just us.
Charlie and Elsie had some time in the sea. We wandered, watched them explore and, for a little while, existed in our own mini world of perfect universal bliss.
Elsie, naturally, celebrated this by having a wee in the sea.
Because even perfect universal bliss has Elsie in it.
Later that afternoon we had ice creams before heading back to camp.
It was exactly the sort of nothing-in-particular we'd gone away hoping to find.
The four of us could simply be.
Our little corner
Back at the campsite, things remained fairly quiet.
A few pitches changed hands during the week, but the numbers stayed much the same. It wasn't a constantly changing environment.
Our tent, however, was difficult to miss.
Tucked into the far corner of the one-way system and glowing away in the evening, our little canvas home became something of a feature as people drove around the site.
The neighbouring dogs remained unsettled at times. There could be long spells of barking and grumbling from next door.
Elsie noticed.
Of course she noticed.
She is Elsie.
She would alert us when something caught her attention or she wasn't entirely happy with what she could hear.
Then she would settle again.
Charlie developed a rather more straightforward approach to campsite life.
His donut bed.
He could watch and observe when he wanted to, but much of one evening, all night and again the following morning he was curled up in it.
After all my research, planning and scoring of requirements, Charlie's assessment of the accommodation appeared to be:
Bed good.
And perhaps that was enough.
Calm didn't mean Charlie and Elsie stopped noticing the world.
It didn't mean they never barked or grumbled.
Elsie had a little growl in the night when foxes were outside.
Charlie had his own little grumble later.
They noticed.
They told us.
We thanked them.
And then, mostly, they went back to sleep.
Apparently, I was on the retreat too
There was one part of the preparation I hadn't really accounted for.
Me.
Work had been intense before we went away. At times, frankly, it had fried my brain.
I'd arrived carrying more tension than I'd realised, along with the tent, stove, roof box and everything else I apparently believed a few nights in Devon required.
And I carry things anyway.
I think. I plan. I anticipate. I like options. I like to understand what happens next.
Mike, meanwhile, can be asked a perfectly reasonable question and reply:
“I don't know.”
Which is not always the answer a heavily planning-orientated Russ particularly wants to hear.
I'd spent months wondering whether Charlie and Elsie would be able to relax on holiday.
It took me slightly longer to realise that I might be the one who needed the practice.
One evening I could feel my own energy changing.
So I put my headphones in.
I listened to some music.
I gave myself some space.
It seemed more important to focus on my own energy and calm than whatever was happening around me.
And it worked.
Perhaps that shouldn't have surprised me.
At Saunton we'd made Charlie and Elsie's world smaller when it had become too big.
Around Food we'd simplified things when the original arrangement wasn't working.
Less noise. Fewer choices. Less pressure.
Less is more.
Sometimes I needed to give myself permission to do exactly the same.
Apparently, I hadn't stopped planning either
There was also the small matter of the car.
We'd already started researching a replacement before the trip.
Our Fiesta has been with us for about five years and, in fairness, we've asked rather a lot of its poor back end.
Two adults. Two Boxers. Everyday life. And, increasingly, enough camping equipment to establish a small canvas settlement.
We're both tall, so more comfort would be welcome. Our lives have changed too. Mike works shifts and travels at all sorts of unsociable hours throughout the seasons, which makes reliability rather more important than it perhaps once was.
And our family — and what we like doing together — has simply outgrown what we bought five years ago.
The Fiesta did remarkably well getting us to Devon.
But with Charlie and Elsie occupying the back, we were performing increasingly improbable feats of packing everywhere else.
So, because apparently going on retreat doesn't prevent me researching things, we carried on looking at cars while we were away.
It was another thing occupying space in already rather busy lives, but this one was also about making those lives easier.
More comfort.
More reliability.
A more useful layout.
And more opportunity to do the things we love with Charlie and Elsie.
When we got home, we secured the sale.
Once we've kitted it out properly with a boot liner, Charlie and Elsie will be able to use the boot for everyday journeys while keeping the back seats for bigger trips like this one.
Hopefully that will also result in slightly less of the interior becoming permanently upholstered in Elsie's white hair.
I accept this may be an ambitious requirement.
And yes, buying a bigger car around the time of our first proper glamping trip may sound slightly excessive.
But really, how else are we supposed to transport the several hundred million glamping tents and accessories Mike now believes we own?
Less is more.
Except, apparently, when it comes to tents.
Home again
Eventually, of course, we had to leave our little retreat.
Friday's journey home took considerably longer than planned.
Traffic had other ideas.
After several days of different routines, different places, different smells, canvas walls, beaches, dogs, people, road noise, foxes outside in the night and a £1.50 toilet brush that had unexpectedly joined the camping inventory, we finally arrived home.
And that wasn't quite the end of the trip either.
Over the weekend there was still some of its energy hanging around.
A little displacement from all that change.
A reminder that coming back through your own front door doesn't necessarily mean everybody immediately drops back into exactly the same rhythm they left behind.
So we watched.
Not staring at Charlie and Elsie waiting for something to happen.
Just doing what we've learned to do.
Watching without looking.
A few days later, things have settled again.
And perhaps that's what this trip has reminded me of most.
Dog Listening isn't something we learned once, applied to Charlie and Elsie and then ticked off as complete.
We're always doing it.
Watching without looking.
Listening to what they're telling us.
Thinking about Food, Danger, the Outside World and Interactions — and recognising that they don't exist in neat little boxes. One can spill into another.
Managing their world where we can.
Sometimes that means creating more physical space.
Sometimes, when the world feels too big, it means making it smaller.
Fewer choices. Less pressure. A clearer boundary.
Less is more.
It means keeping the principles consistent while accepting that the practical answer might look different somewhere else.
And sometimes recognising that the thing that needs to change is us.
We won't always get it right.
We don't need to.
Charlie and Elsie didn't need a holiday where nothing unexpected happened.
They needed enough consistency to know that when something did happen, they didn't have to deal with everything themselves.
Charlie could watch.
Elsie could enthusiastically offer her opinion.
They could tell us when something wasn't quite right.
And we could listen.
Before we went, I kept coming back to the same question.
Was this something we wanted to do and were asking them to manage, or was it something the four of us could genuinely enjoy together?
I think somewhere in that little cove at Grunta Beach, with nobody else around, Charlie and Elsie in the sea, Mike and me watching them and Elsie apparently deciding the Atlantic needed topping up, I stopped wondering.
We had found our own little world.
The laptop can come back out now.
There will be more planning. There will undoubtedly be more tents. There may even be a permanent place in the camping inventory for a £1.50 toilet brush.
But a few days after coming home, I'm reminded of something much simpler.
Dog Listening isn't something we did.
We're always doing it.
Watching without looking.
Listening without demanding an answer.
Managing our world where we can and helping Charlie and Elsie understand they don't have to manage it for us.
And remembering that sometimes the calmest thing we can do is simplify things, make the world a little smaller, create the space we need and carry on together.
One calm step at a time.
Russ
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