Tyler and I have two wonderful pups, Jem and Graham. They are pretty spoiled, especially with us at home most of the time now, but despite having pretty well-traveled parents, these dogs hadn’t done any traveling of their own… until last week.
We had already lined up my sister to dogsit for our anniversary trip to Portland and Seattle, but when our plans changed, we decided that we would shake things up and bring them with us – predominantly because it would actually save us money. How’s that?
- We were driving to Savannah instead of flying in and out of the Pacific Northwest, so there was no additional cost to transporting them.
- We stayed at The Kimpton Brice Hotel, which allows you to bring two pets with you as part of your stay, so there was no additional cost to housing them.
- We no longer needed to pay my sister to dogsit (she was happy to give up the gig to go on her own travels), which saved us her nightly rate.
Since this was our first time traveling with dogs, we found that there were definitely changes to our traditional traveling style. We saw the biggest impacts on:
- Packing. We can easily and quickly pack our own things, but we also had to pack on behalf of the dogs. This meant making sure we had…
- Food.
- Food bowls.
- Treats.
- Leashes.
- Harnesses.
- Toys.
- Dog poop bags.
- We stocked up on Earth Rated bags for our trip, and they were great! We would definitely recommend them, especially for the price, the scent (lavender all the way) and their use of recycled materials.
Side note: if you’re traveling with dogs, you’ll also want to account for anything specific to your pups, like medications or their dog bed/crate. Our pups slept in the bed with us!
- Eating. Not all restaurants are dog-friendly, and those that are, require you to eat outside. Since we’re traveling in the age of coronavirus, we preferred to eat outside anyway, but those seats were more popular than usual because many people feel that way. It was also extremely hot (nothing like summer in the South), so we occasionally got food to go and ate it while walking or in our hotel room to accommodate the pups and the temperatures.
- Walking. We normally walk around a lot when we travel, but we also had to make sure we took the pups out on their normal walks so they had a chance to get outside and do their business. They were frequently exhausted at the end of the day because it was often easier to have them with us for big chunks of time rather than run them back to the hotel in between activities.
- Leaving them alone. We normally leave our dogs at home without a problem, but we were very conscious of them potentially wrecking our hotel room (and costing $$$ in damages) while we were away. We also accounted for how quickly we were required to respond if there was a noise complaint – per hotel policy, within 30 minutes. This meant we couldn’t travel very far without them when we did leave them, which is how they spent the whole day with us in Charleston, South Carolina. We feel very lucky that our dogs were so good when we did leave them in the hotel room, especially since my MIL has had her dog cause some minor damage at a past stay by scratching the door.
Overall, we found that even with these impacts on our travel schedule, we enjoyed having the dogs with us. We’ll definitely travel with them again.