Comments on: What Should You Do With Your Dog When You Travel For The Holidays?

By: Dog Lovers: Best of the Week | Good Family Dogs

Dog Lovers: Best of the Week | Good Family Dogs — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 19:30:36 +0000

[…] what to do with your dog if you’re traveling for the holidays? We take ours with us, but Something Wagging’s got a good summary of the options (along with pros and cons of […]

By: Laurie Luck - Smart Dog University

Laurie Luck - Smart Dog University — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 19:51:11 +0000

Love this article, Pamela. Lots of great information! We, too, either take our dogs or have someone stay with them. In a pinch, I’ll drive them 2.5 hours to my parents’ house, but with 4 dogs, that’s a lot to drop off on my parent’s front porch! 🙂 The dogs do love it there though — they go to the lake every day for at least an hour and swim to their heart’s content. It’s a Labrador’s dream — walk from the backdoor to the lake… Ahhhhh!

By: Dawn

Dawn — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 17:51:31 +0000

This is a lot of wonderful information! Maya and Pierson go with us when we make our annual holiday road trip from Kansas to Texas to visit family. But there have been times in the past when we were flying to other places in the US and they couldn’t go. Maya does very well in a boarding kennel with a large group play area. I don’t like vet boarding kennels where they stay in a cage most of the day. Generally, though, Maya and Pierson stay with friends.

By: weliveinaflat

weliveinaflat — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 12:56:00 +0000

We were intending to leave Donna at at dog boarder. We were intending to have her at the dog boarder for daycare sometime before we have to board her, but it did not occur to me to leave her over for one night. Something to think about. Good post.

By: Lauranne

Lauranne — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 09:52:23 +0000

One of the joys of having a smaller dog – the odd time my cairn has needed to be looked after whilst we have been away he has been taken in by family and friends. My grandparents take him happily, as they used to have dogs and so love to have him stay for a while and if they are busy we have people cuing around the block who would have him for a short time.
With my collie is it a very different story, he is too strong for a lot of people to walk (although I have trained him to “heel” I think it is only myself who rigorously sticks to this walking my ex seems to think what is the point!) and with his fear aggression those who would not worry about his size worry about this and so have said they will have him for a few hours but not walk him.
I hate that BD has to go into kennels the few times we have been unable to take him with us, especially with his fear issues but we felt we had no choice!

By: Kimberly

Kimberly — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 03:17:40 +0000

Oliver, our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, also sleeps better in hotel beds. I think its cause he gets the middle pillow in the king size bed. At home, he either has to push us around to make some stretching room or curl up on top of us.

By: houndstooth

houndstooth — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 03:09:01 +0000

Most of our family is within an hour drive of us, so we don’t have to make that decision. The one time we did have to travel out of state for a long time and couldn’t take our dogs with us, we were lucky and had a good friend who also has Greyhounds who lived two blocks down the street. The dogs stayed here and she came down and let them out and fed them for us. I wouldn’t do that now with Morgan, though. We just make our travel plans to include the dogs, and we’ve learned that there are plenty of ways to make that happen if we take time to plan for it.

By: Jodi

Jodi — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 20:50:54 +0000

We mainly stay home, although most Thanksgivings we head to my sisters in New Hampshire Friday morning. She has three dogs and 11 acres and mostly things go well. Of course, we rarely leave all the dogs alone together. Mostly the girls go out and the guys stay home and vice versa.

We’ve made the trip so many times that we have a routine for stopping. We always stop at the same areas up and back. I usually use the facilities first while Hubby walks the dogs then we swap.

I’ve thought about all the other options and honestly, I’m not comfortable kenneling them and I haven’t found a sitter I’d trust. So if they can’t go, neither can WE. Which doesn’t mean one of us can’t go. 😉

By: Jackie Bouchard

Jackie Bouchard — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 18:04:29 +0000

We are lucky as my immediate family is all close enough that we just get together for the day. (Although in the past, we had to either bring the dog along – even flew with her once, nightmare of worry – or find a place to keep her, also worrisome!) Whenever we go away now, my sis and I trade dog-sitting duties. If they couldn’t keep her, we probably just wouldn’t go away! (Or I’d try to find someone I could trust to stay home with her.) I think going to a boarding facility would set Rita back! Luckily we don’t have to consider that.

By: Taryn

Taryn — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 17:01:44 +0000

Ugh! I don’t trust anyone to care for my dogs for more than a walk or two. When it was just Wilson, it was easy as I had a good friend (who owned Wilson’s best dog buddy) he stayed with and I watched her dog in return. But when Jimmy came along, it became harder to palm of 2 dogs onto a friend, esp. since Jimmy can be snarky. So we started planning road trip vacations that were dog friendly (La Tourelle get very high marks as being dog friendly!). I am starting to get itchy for something more exotic, so it could be we will have to try the house-sitter route.