WWYD - saying bye to dog before vacation?

Anonymous wrote:Yikes I rarely put much thought into, and now I feel bad! I have a sweet lab who loves other people and is quite independent, and I never thought he “missed” us when we were gone.

I used to have a job where I traveled every week, I was single and living at my parents and had a dog. One Sunday I had to leave by early evening and the dog was following me around excitedly hoping for a ride and I told her she couldn't ride along, at which point she went and lay down by the rear tire and looked soooo sad and morose.

But I have wondered about dogs' sense of time and memory. What research has been done indicates dogs are more excited to see an owner if it's been a couple of hours vs a half hour. My dog was a stray who was rescued, turned up in a very rural area far from any major highways, no owner ever showed up. Took little time for him to think of his new home as "home". I've had a few vacations up to 9 days where he was home and people he knew were taking care of him, when I returned he was excited but not noticeably more excited than when I get home from work (and he's expecting a walk), so I wonder if every day to a dog is really the same day. A couple of times he's been in the pound, and when I pick him up he's too busy smelling all the smells to pay much attention to me. (FWIW the pound is in the same building as the vet, and he's as excited to go to the vet and smell stuff after he's spent a night in the pound as before. . . although the second time he was in the pound he slept the entire day after I bailed him out).