My nervous dog earned a poor rating on a pet sitting site. Now what?

It's tough to leave your pet behind when you take a trip.

You can't text them. You can't send a postcard that says "Smelling lots of wonderful things, wish you were here, be home soon." As far as they're concerned, you vanished — and left them behind.

When we've gone out of town in the past, our white lab Birch stayed over with my friend the Giant Swede. It worked out well.

The Swede is a great lover of dogs, and Birch respects him because he is very tall and probably smells like a Viking. There's no hopping up on the sofa at the Swede's house. All the man has to do is make a quick tsch sound, and Birch rethinks not only hopping on the sofa but also his entire life up to that point.

Besides, the Swede owes me. Back in 1998, I took care of his Doberman. The dog had issues in the sense that National Geographic has issues, which is to say, many. Its preferred method of expressing displeasure was to put its long snout between your legs, bare its teeth, and issue a low growl. It made me rethink my future life beyond that point, particularly because we hadn't had kids yet.

So when we had to head to California for a wedding, I thought Birch would stay there. Alas, no: The Swede would be gone on business. This left three options.

A boarding kennel. But I couldn't picture Birch sleeping alone and being let out to jostle in the scrum of exercise sessions. Birch isn't bad with other dogs, but he lacks the knack of easy camaraderie. Chalk it up to early days as a shivering skinny orphan in the woods down south, the weeks in a Humane Society pen, alone, listening to all the other dogs whine and bark and do the canine equivalent of dragging a metal cup across the bars and demanding to see the warden. So a kennel was out.

Third option: Board him with someone who takes in dogs one at a time at their home. It wouldn't be institutional and he'd get personal attention. I found a fellow on a website that hooks up boarders with boardees, and things seemed to go well when we met. So we dropped the dog off and slipped out without saying goodbye.

We got text updates: chatty, friendly, upbeat. "Took a walk!" "Played tug-of-war." Birch looked uncertain and dismayed in every shot, but I was probably just anthropomorphizing. The first night went well.

The second night, we were told, Birch cried for hours. Everyone who's had a young puppy knows the pain of an inconsolable canine. It's a sadness you can't solve from a distance. We apologized to the boarder.

The afternoon update was worse. Birch had made a rather large, uh, accident on the dining room carpet.

When my wife picked up on the dog on Day 3, the boarder said he was a nice dog, but, well, maybe he wouldn't sit for Birch again. Ever. Unless the dog went on anti-anxiety medication.

I have a one-star dog.

From now on our vacations are dependent entirely on the Giant Swede's availability. Someday some family member will say, "Hey, missed you at the reunion, what happened?" And I'll respond: "Oh, a friend had to leave town for a meeting to update energy-efficiency protocols for medical facilities, so we couldn't go. Otherwise the dog would poop on a stranger's rug."