Highly trained pets...

We stayed at an amazing hotel on this business trip. It was set up as a complex with several units spread over a number of acres. I am sure I jogged off all the calories consumed during breakfast just by walking back to our room. None the less, it was a beautiful walk through palm grass bushes and under trees that we called "the jungle" that emerged into a small grassy plain.

It was at this point that we heard dogs barking, completly startling the children with me on this trek back from breakie. (I was NOT going to haul eight children to breakfast, on foot, up oodles of stairs so we did it in shifts - I told you I jogged all those calories off.)
I explained that this great hotel even allowed pets!
"Woah!", exclaimed Noah. He joked; "Hey, I could have brought Marzie (his chubby guinea pig) and let him run around here through the palm grass..."
I listened to him rattle on describing all the things Marzie would do, and finally said to him: "But if you let Marzie loose here - you would never see him again, he would run away!"
"Oh, I could only do this if he were a highly trained pet!"
To which Anna whispered to me as she once more grabbed Emma, almost three, and pulled her back onto the path; "I wish Emma was a highly trained pet!" I laughed as I sped up to catch up with this wild "pet" in hopes of getting her through the parking lot in one piece. "Yes! That would be great, wouldn't it?" I called back to Anna.