This whole moving thing is very hard on Sahraa – everything familiar is being packed up, and she insists on watching the packers instead of hiding upstairs. For a while she was out in the garden, where she dug several new holes, but it’s so hot outside she finally came in to supervise again.

She has gone through this several times before, in Washington and in Budapest, so she knows what’s coming. I’m terribly worried about the trip for her this time – from Riyadh in extremely hot weather, even in the middle of the night, to Frankfurt to DC for two days’ rest (for her), to Portland and back to Washington. It’s a lot to put her through, but there’s no way around it unless we decide to put her in a kennel in Washington for three weeks, which would probably make her more unhappy than the two cross-country flights.

I have never in three years seen Sahraa lie here, but I guess she was trying to escape the chaos of the packers inside as well as the sun.

Sahraa and the movers, posted earlier: