We spent two weeks navigating the Hawaiian isles. Oahu, Maui, Big Island, Kauai … I don’t know if I can pick my favorite. It truly is a beautiful state, and with the six of us bringing along nine cameras, the trip was throughly documented.

See our Sights from Hawaii video below, as well as some snapshots from the trip!

It’s early morning, still dark outside, and I’m on my way to the airport again. I kiss my husband good-bye saying, “Call you tonight” as I run out the door with my luggage rolling behind me.

My busy workweek has begun. I’ll be at client offices through Thursday and then I head back home again. I keep extremely busy all week and the days go very fast – for me anyway.

While I talk with my husband every night, I am so busy with my schedule that I often forget what it’s like for him to be home alone. Though he travels frequently himself, I usually leave him on Monday and he heads downtown to his office.

In the evenings, I head to my hotel where I order a meal that someone else cooks. He returns to a house where the kitchen is quiet. He makes himself dinner and shares the time with our dog Toby at his feet.

He retreats to his home office in the evening, where we talk on the phone for an hour or more. He then heads off to a half-empty bed where he falls asleep next to my pillow. He wakes up and repeats this solo process each day until I arrive home at midnight late in the week.

He doesn’t say too much about my travel though I know that solitude bothers him. He’ll never ask me to stop traveling, but I know he’d love it if I did. He also knows that to stop the traveling would destroy my spirit as I love being on the road.

So we continue this ritual of me leaving him every week, counting the days and nights until I’m back home again and we can share a few days together.

I have probably left my husband over 500 times. Thank goodness he’s always happy to let me return again.

Our pet’s behavior when we are preparing to leave or their excitement when we arrive back home are the common topics of conversation. My dog Toby is usually sitting by the front door on Thursday evenings around the time that I am due to get home. My husband doesn’t have to say anything to him about my homecoming; Toby just knows. He also knows when I’m about to leave home again. As I pack my suitcase, he gets restless. His sad eyes break my heart.

There are a lot of pet friendly travel websites and vacation ideas. I have seen many dogs being loaded in to the cargo holds of planes, a few walking around hotels, and have even heard of some finding their way on to cruise ships. As much as I miss Toby, I don’t plan on bringing him along on any trips. He is always taken care of when we are out of town and he wouldn’t do well being cooped up for hours in a hotel room, the underbelly of a plane, or the backseat of a car.

I’m writing about my dog during my vacation because of a run in we had with a local. My husband and I were walking the town streets of Grand Turk in the Caribbean and many dogs were roaming about. We found a dog who was almost an exact replica of Toby! They could have been brothers … but this Caribbean doppelgänger was a bit larger and a little less gray in the snout.

That’s when my husband and I really started missing Toby. Again, we started talking with others about their pets … and more dog and cat pictures started coming out…

I’d love to see a picture of your faithful friend! Post links in the comments below and also let us know your experience traveling with pets.