Our dog is another element of stress because we can’t bring her with us. She is a 12 year old mutt and to be completely honest, she’s on the downhill slide, but at the same time she’s not on her way to doggy heaven anytime super soon. We adore her, we’ve been with her since she was a baby. We also know that we can’t dictate our year long trip on her health.
UPDATE: Just yesterday one of our dearest friends said that she WANTS to take our dog while we are gone. It’s an offer that we are going to have a hard time accepting purely because we don’t want to make things hard on our friend at all, but just knowing that that possibility is there… it takes a little of the load off.