Life in Portland, A Good Choice: Vacation Tips for Dog Parents

by Christy Caplan | October 8, 2015

My Vacation is not complete… unless my dogs are with me. 

As summer is officially wrapped up, I wanted to recap the adventures we were on with the dogs including our September Mt. Hood vacation. I’m throwing in safety tips in this post as I always learn a lot from our travels and some things worked well and other things didn’t… I also used Val Mallison’s, “The Dog Lover’s Companion to the Pacific Northwest” and her Safety First essentials.

Bruiser relaxing

Walter and Shermie have trouble with new environments and staying in a strange house for a week had its ups and downs. Walter couldn’t settle the first night, he hid under the table in the living area – the new smells gave him anxiety. Shermie and Bruiser seemed fine the first night. We’ve seen this behavior before and we hoped after the first night it would pass. He also had trouble with the texture of the floors – and we needed to lay down sheets so he could go from room to room. So the first night always has its challenges. Val Mallinson talked about car safety in her book and I’m a big advocate for dogs riding in crates so that’s on my list of what worked:

Lesson #1:
Crates in cars- For trips around town and for vacation trips it’s so much safer to keep the dogs in their crates. All three of our dogs are used to crates so it’s not a big deal and it does take up precious car space but it’s worth it.

Lesson #2:
Rain coats- We have a variety of brands in the mix but Sherm has his Ruffwear coat which is perfect for him. We have the Quinzee for the doxies and the K-9 Overcoat for Sherm.

Lesson #3:

Pet First Aid Kit – You can make one yourself if you want, Red Cross has a pet first aid kit you can buy as well. We used a cream for bug bites fairly often this trip which was something I bought at a local pet store here in town at Healthy Pets so I’d add something like that. Pack tweezers for tick removal.

Lesson #4:
Camera other than my mobile. All of us have killer camera on our phones – but if you have a nicer camera pack it in your backpack on trips in a sock. It’s worth having for landscape shots.

Walty taking in a big sniff