Alexandria, VA – You’ve brought out the suitcase, and now a pair of big, brown, sad eyes are watching you pack. There’s nothing worse than heading off on vacation and leaving your dog behind.
Oh, wait, I take that back. There actually is something worse: bringing your dog on a vacation that ends up being incredibly stressful for you both.
There’s a real skill to planning great canine-inclusive trips. Over the past 30 years of trial and error, our family has finally learned how to create vacations that work beautifully for humans and dogs. You know what else we’ve learned? How to embrace the beauty of an excellent dog-sitter when that’s the better option.
Will Your Dog Like This Trip?
The newbie mistake is to assume your dog will always be happier coming along than staying home. That’s how dogs often end up on “vacations” that feel anything but fun to them. The dogs are either brought along to activities that feel stressful or left behind in unfamiliar spots that feel terrifying. Suddenly your usually perfect dog is chewing up hotel sofas and snapping at your cousin’s toddlers, and you’re astounded.
Want to avoid all that? Make yourself ponder this simple question regarding each part of your trip: What will my dog be doing/feeling? Figure that out, and you’re on your way to an answer that works for you both. (Empathy and a plan are the twin pillars of great dog ownership.)
To decide if you should bring your dog on this particular trip, think through each of your days and imagine your dog’s experience. Where will your dog be if you’re going out to dinner? If the answer is that you’ll only eat at restaurants that allow dogs on the patio, consider whether your dog actually likes that. (For many, sitting under a table in a confined, crowded space is boring and stressful.)
Alternatively, if you’d leave your dog back at the hotel during that outing, does your dog have any experience staying in a new place like that? Will she be scared alone, thinking she’s being left forever? Mind you, some dogs are spectacular travelers and love every bit of this. Others, not so much.
Decades ago, we were staying at my sister-in-law’s house with our dogs, and we left them in the rec room when we all went out for dinner. When we came home to a thoroughly trashed door, we owed an apology not only to Tom’s sister but to our dogs, who had been terrified that they’d been abandoned.
We hadn’t done the empathy exercise beforehand: We knew they were safe, but they didn’t. Had we pondered it more carefully, we’d have anticipated their likely stress and come up with ideas:
- We could have pushed that dinner out to the third night instead of right when we arrived so the dogs would have a chance to understand this was a new home base.
- We could have made things feel more familiar by using a pattern we’d practiced at home: crates, with a soundtrack they’re used to, plus frozen stuffed Toppls so they’d think: “Oh, okay, it’s just like when they leave at home. They’ll be back soon.”
Will Managing the Dog Ruin Your Experience?
If a situation on your trip isn’t perfect, there’s usually a way you can step up and help your dog through it. Maybe when you go to the giant family reunion picnic, one of you is prepared to take the dog away from all the chaos and go on a calming sniffari walk. Maybe on that three-day drive out West, you take turns going inside at rest stops because it’s too hot to leave the dog in the car alone.
That can all work. But are you okay with it? Just as it’s important to ask if your dog will enjoy this, you also need to ponder whether keeping your dog calm and safe will ruin your vacation. Sometimes, truly, hiring a great pet sitter means you and your dog are both happier.
The Best Dog Vacation
However, for many of us, there’s nothing better than a real family vacation, which of course includes the dogs! Enter the king of all canine/human trip options: the rental house at the beach, the lake, or the mountains. Sure, you get the dilapidated rental because it’s dog friendly. Plus, you have to book it nine months in advance because it’s so popular. But you gleefully hit “book” because every year the dogs happily fall into the swing of those easy-to-manage weeks, where everybody’s together 24/7, and the dogs can take part in every bit of the fun.
Alexandria dog trainer Kathy Callahan (CPDT-KA, LFDM) loves to help people and their dogs live more happily together. More at puppypicks.com. Check out her new book, Welcoming Your Puppy from Planet Dog.
