5 things NOT to do when road tripping with a dog!

One of the first things we did when I quit my job and we decided to go travelling around Europe in a motorhome, was get a dog. You can't really see him, he's kind of cute. My bad! This is Mac, he's a working Spanish, he's now three and a bit, and he's gorgeous, but he does present his own set of challenges and things that need to be organised and sorted out when we're travelling with him. So if you've got a dog of your own, or you're thinking of getting one, and you want to know more about travelling with a dog, this is the video for you. Hi I'm Cat and welcome to Wandering Bird. On this channel we share tips and tricks to help motorhome and campervan owners make the most of their time on the road. And today it is the turn of our vanlife pets, specifically dogs, because we only have experience of travelling with a dog. I know loads of people now travelling with cats and other kinds of animals, but we can only really talk about what it's like to travel with a dog. As the weather's got warmer, we've been getting loads more questions on how to handle having a dog in the van, how to care for them properly, the sorts of things that you should be aware of, and we're going to do our best to answer all of those for you today. Mac is my trusty steed, he's a bit warm, it's ridiculously hot at the moment, and I've got everything shut so that the sound quality is fairly good, so bless him. If you can hear panting, well it could be me to be fair, but it's probably more likely to be him. Anyway, let's dive into some of your questions, let's start with the most obvious one. Something that people ask us all the time are, do dogs legally need to be restrained whilst they're in the motorhome? The answer to that is yes, they do. They have to be physically restrained, they can't just be loose and wandering around. We have done this several ways whilst we've had Mac. When he was a really little puppy, we had a fabric crate with a proper frame that we wedged between our two seats, so the driver and the passenger seat at the front, and he was sat in there curled up, we could make sure he was alright because he was right next to us as we were driving. Obviously, as he grew, he outgrew that crate, so then we moved on to, we have a harness on him and then it clips into a seat, and we've got two options with these things. We've got one which goes into the buckle bit of the seat, I'll show you, that's this one, and that literally has just gone into the actual connector bit down below, and that clips in there, and then this clips onto his, obviously he's not wearing it now, but that clips onto his harness. The second type we've got is this thing, which is awesome, and this one, depending on the type of your headdress, we use this one in the car more than on the van, I'll admit. This one, it can go around the headdress, it clips on so it sits like that, and then this bit attaches to his buckle. We prefer this one for the van because it gives him a little bit more movement because we've got an L-shaped dinette here, whereas if he's only got one seat, you might find this one's a little bit better for them, but always connect this to a harness, not directly to their collar, because you don't want to snap their neck or anything if you have to brake hard. So that's how we secure them, obviously he is a small to medium-sized dog, if you've got a bigger dog or you don't want them on your seat, a lot of people I know have got proper hooks and eyes fitted into the floors, if you're not sure how to do this at a safe point, I'd recommend getting someone professionally to do it for you so that it's actually a safe fixing point, and you can then attach a lead to their harness and that will keep them in one place on the floor. So there are loads of ways that you can secure dogs, again a lot of people have a crate for bigger dogs, if you want to use a crate, and we have used a crate for him in the past, especially when he was a puppy. I wouldn't travel with him in a crate unless it's somewhere that's properly secured down, I'd be worried about the crate sliding if there was an accident or anything, but if you've got your crate secured down then yeah, absolutely that's a place that you could pad out and then they can sit and travel in that if they're happy. An advantage we had with Mac is we got him in the van when he was nine weeks old, and literally we picked him up, we'd just come back from Norway, we picked him up in the van, he spent his first week with us in the van, he's grown up as a van dog, so we've never had to worry about things like car sickness or him not being used to the noises in the van because he's done it so often. We did, after lockdown, obviously he hadn't been anywhere for a year and a half or whatever, we worked him up to it. If you've got a dog who isn't used to travelling in a van, bear in mind that the noises in the back of a motorhome or campervan are different to what they are to you in the passenger seat or the driver's seat, and they do rattle and there are quite a lot of weird noises back here. So I would always have somebody sat at the back with the dog for the first few trips just to get them used to it, and also do a lot of little short trips that generally end in something fun. So go out, go 20 minutes down the road to a park, so the dog gets used to the van being an amazing place there, fun adventures happen at the end of it, because dogs, I mean, Mac travels two or three hours, bless him, but he knows at the end of it something fun will happen, we'll go for a cool walk or he'll get to go swimming or something. And if you can build that up with a dog that's not been used to it then you're going to find travelling and van life so much easier because the dog's not going to fight you on going into the van. If you get in immediately and do this massive drive, they're going to hate it and it's going to put them off completely. So try and work up to your first big long trip with lots of smaller trips. Next question we get asked a lot is where do we sleep? Now, when we first got him, we had a drop-down bed in our motorhome and he used to sleep on the drop-down bed with us, but I lived in fear of him rolling over and falling off. I hated it. One of the reasons that we changed the way that we sleep in the motorhome, we don't use the drop-down bed in this one at all, is that we wanted something lower so that I didn't have to worry about him rolling, falling and hurting himself. So he sleeps on the bed with us, that's how he's always done it. I know not everyone has that and that's fine. So he doesn't have his own bed, we don't need to find a space for it, but if you have a bed, you can always find a cubby or something where you can put the bed and have that one spot as their spot. It's all going to be down to whether you're happy with them on your furniture, happy with them in your bed or how you want your van life to go, but I'd recommend you have a spot that they know is their sleepy spot. And if it's not going to be on the bed, I mean, Max will obviously sleep on any of the seats as we're moving around and as we're doing things, he'll move around the van with us. But I know a lot of dogs, they like having one space that they know is their safe, sleepy space. It's not... Yeah. I don't know what that was either. I think we're launching drones. Okay. Let's talk about what we do when you've been out and about and they're not in a fit state to come back in the van. So if they are wet, wet dogs in the van are way worse than wet dogs in a house. They are just one of the hardest things. If you watch the worst bits about van life video I did a while ago, that was one of my biggest bugbears. I'd forgotten how difficult it was dealing with a wet and hyperactive, because water makes my dogs zoomies, dealing with that in a really small space. So I recommend getting something that you can get the water off them really quick. We've got something called a doggy bag. There are loads of different types and makes on Amazon. And it's basically a bag that we can zip him up in and you can rub him all down and it actually works really well. In a couple of minutes, it's certainly got all the muck and the sand and a lot of the moisture off him. So that makes him a little bit nicer than put back in the van. A lot of people swear by rough and tumble coats. Those are really, really high quality, worth paying a little bit extra for. And if you do have a dog that likes to go out in the water and play and get mucky, those are really, really good. But again, any form of coat that will stop you having to clean your dog from top to toe when they've been wet and mucky will help you if they are mucky. If you have an outdoor shower, you lucky, lucky devil, that's going to be a godsend. We've got a jerry can. It's got a shower attachment. And honestly, we use it all the time, mostly for the dog. We've never, as far as I can remember, maybe we've been swimming in the sea. Actually, we've washed the salt off ourselves. But I'd say 99 percent of the time that we've used that shower attachment has been for the dog, whether it's been in the sea, whether he's just mucky, we hose him down, then we stick him in the bag, we dry him all off. And he's a lot easier to deal with that when he comes into the bath. We're very lucky in the Swift that we've got a bathroom that's got a heating outlet so we can then hang the wet dog towels, the wet drying mats and all these things out. And it will dry overnight if we've got the heating on in the little bathroom space. I know not everyone has that. But try and find somewhere where you can then put the wet towels and the wet stuff that will then hopefully dry for the next time, because, you know, they're going to do it again. Similar sort of thing. What do you do if it's either really hot or really cold? Hot is probably one of the hardest things to deal with. Like at the moment, it is baking. It's too hot for them. He doesn't know what to do. I'm seriously debating getting a little collapsible folding paddling pool for him because we're on campsites quite a lot this year. Normally wild camping, you can't do that. But because we're on campsite, we could get just a small one that he could just about get his body weight, his body laid down in. And then we could just fill it with a tiny bit of water. But just to give him a little bit of a place to cool off, I might look into it. I don't know if that's possible or not. I'm just telling you what I might be doing. But in heat, you've got to be really, really careful. It's one of the reasons that we tend to head to the mountains in the summer and we don't go to the really hot places because it's too hot for our dog. So we've got a cool jacket and the cool jacket he loves. And you can just put it straight in the freezer and it get really cool quite quickly within about half an hour or so. And you wrap it around him and he just cools him down so that he can sleep. But you also can get these things called cooling mats, where when you put some weight on it, it comes off cool. Now, he hates it. If we put a towel on top, he's all right with it. But there's something about the texture of it that he doesn't really like. But it does work every now and then when it's really, really hot. I'll lay a towel out and he'll try and fall asleep on that. But generally, he prefers to sleep next to it, which defeats the point of having it. But you can get them. You can also get these cooling collars, which are very similar things to the jackets. And they just let the dog cool down a little bit by giving them something cold near their skin. The other thing that's a godsend is the portable water bowl. I'm just going to get that and that's this thing. And I take this everywhere with me on every walk, in my bag. When we're going anywhere with him, I take this and it's just got a little bit where you can put the water in and then this is what he drinks out of. So if I put him like that and then you press the button and it just puts a little bit of water in and it's absent now. Now I'm stuck holding this for the rest of this video. But it's brilliant because then he can drink out of that wherever we are. I don't have to worry about him being so overheated from a walk that he can't drink. Similarly, if it's cold, I mean, cold is slightly easier because obviously if he's cold, you're probably cold, too. So you're going to put the heating on, warm him up and everything else. So cold is a lot easier to deal with. One thing to remember is if you're going somewhere snowy, that dog paws aren't particularly well protected from the snow. So you need to be really careful how long they're outside for, how cold it is. And take steps. I mean, some people buy their little dog socks, take steps to protect them from walking in snow and ice and all those things for too long. It can really hurt and damage their paws. OK, let's talk about leaving your dog in a motorhome. And this is where opinions can get quite heated and they can get quite controversial. I'm just going to tell you what we do and then you free to make up your own mind. Firstly, when it's baking hot like it is right now, please, please don't ever, ever, ever leave your dog in the campervan or motorhome. Don't make the mistake of thinking that because it's the biggest space, it will be OK, it won't heat up just like a car does. Even today, of all the hatches open, this little 12 volt fan has been going and he's still passed out. And it's not enough. I am literally everything's been shut up for 10 minutes to make sure the sound quality for this video is good enough. And I'm sweating. It's so hot. And if you can imagine being left here for 15, 20 minutes with nothing open and nowhere opening a window. Yeah, please don't leave your dog in that environment. It's horrible for them. Having said that, and this is where the slightly controversial opinion goes. We do leave our dog in the van for a short period of time. An hour, two hours max. Two hours is our hard limit on what we will leave him for. We do this when, say, I want to go shopping. I would rather leave him in the van than take him in time up outside a shop. I'm not going to do that. There's too many stories of dog nappers and people stealing dogs from outside shops. I will never leave him tied up outside. So my alternative to that is to leave him in the van for half an hour, an hour as I go into a shop, obviously, assuming it's not crazy hot like it is today. So the honest truth is that, yes, we do leave our dog for an hour, a couple of hours when we've got to go and do something else that he can't come and join us with. As I said earlier in the video, there have been times where we've not been able to do stuff because we had the dog and we knew that he would be left for too long. So we chose to look after him and make sure that he was OK rather than go and do what it was we wanted to do. And that's always going to be our philosophy on how we deal with that. We are lucky that our dog will do this when we go away. Admittedly, Covid hasn't helped us and he has got a little bit whiny now if we're out of his sight. But generally, he will curl up and go to sleep if we leave the van. If you've got a dog who cries or barks or whines or scratches or generally makes a lot of noise when you're not there, especially if you're going to leave him on a campsite, a lot of campsites have got these rules where you can't leave the dog unattended in the van, which is fine and makes a lot of sense. If you've got a dog that's going to alert everybody to the fact that you've left him unattended in the van, you're going to find yourself getting in trouble and people are going to complain about the fact that we've broken the rules. So if you've got a dog that does that, you're going to probably need to find another solution. I don't know what that is because I'm guessing it will depend on your dog. But that's something to bear in mind. If you don't know, then you need to put some sort of camera or alarm on. The Arlo Go that we've got is great because it's got volume and noise. So maybe you want to set up a camera or even just leave a phone in the van. Go well away so that hiding around the back isn't going to work because the dog still knows and can still hear or smell that you're there. But right away, set up a video recording and see what they do. I mean, Mac takes 15 minutes or so to settle down. He will sit and be alert, but he won't make a lot of noise. And we tend to shut blinds and windows and things so that he can't bark at dogs. He doesn't tend to bark at cyclists. He does. I think it's something to do with a lycra. But yes, we shut the blinds into that. He can't be distracted by those. But it's worth knowing what your dog does when you've got away. So you know whether or not you've got a problem with noise. Whilst we're on the subject of campsites, let's talk about dog walks. Now, there are some campsites which have got the most amazing dog walking facilities. One of my favorite is Rooksbury Park down on the south coast, down near Portsmouth. And they have this incredible dog field that is just one of the best we've ever seen. And he can run off lead and he can chase his ball. And it's fantastic. They've also got woods all around and everything. There have been many other campsites now that they seem to be improving their dog facilities, which is great. And we will choose a campsite just like a lot of families or parents with kids will choose it based on the kids play area. We'll often choose a campsite based on the dog's area. And because sometimes you get campsites with really, really small, muddy, horrible patches that are just not good enough, especially for a dog like us that needs a lot of exercise, that you need something with a decent amount of space. So if that's something to look for, then definitely do your research onto campsites, because not all campsites have the same level of facilities when it comes to dog walking. Another thing to remember now when you're traveling with a dog, especially now if you're going to go overseas, the pet passport for a UK based dog has become obsolete. If they have a what was a UK pet passport, you now have to get an animal health certificate. I'm going to link to the video that tells you more about that. But please don't plan your holiday. You figure out how you're going to get the animal health certificate, how long it takes and all that stuff. But if you're going to do a last minute break, you might find that your dog's not able to come with you. Yes, they're expensive. Yes, they're a pain. But unfortunately, that is the situation as it is now. So you need to go and speak to your vet and work out exactly what your dog needs to do, if it needs to have any extra vaccinations or jabs or pop ups or anything like that. Allow yourself the time before you book your next overseas holiday. A lot of people have asked over taking dog food abroad. Now, I'll be honest, we've come to the UK. But since Brexit, we haven't gone with a van to back to France or to Europe with a lot of dog food. We did it. We always carry several tins of hair and we pass. I think we've done it twice. My husband's been back and forth a couple of times and we've had those tins of dog food on and nobody's battered an eye. But we haven't stocked up for two or three week holiday with a load of dog food on. And we don't know what's that going to be. If you're worried, I would say don't buy a load of dog food and just stock up when you're over on the other side. If you've got a specific type that you want to take for your dog's dietary requirements or whatever, then buy it and see what happens. I wouldn't go as far as hiding it or anything like that, because, you know, if they're going to go looking for it, they're going to find it. There's no guarantee what they're going to do. So I think it's going to depend a lot on what sort of border guard you get. So if you're really concerned or have to be a specific type, I would buy it and see what happens. But just bear in mind the fact that you might end up losing it. And quickly want to touch on what we're talking about overseas. Dog injuries. We had a horrible situation in Mac last year. What was it before lockdown? I can't remember. It might have been a year and a half ago where he got the whole side of his face ripped, we think, on a bit of barbed wire. He was scurrying through the undergrowth as he does. And that was horrendous because we were in France. Didn't speak particularly good French. He was pouring blood. It was on a Sunday and we had to figure that out. And again, I'll link to the video here on what we did, the steps that we took. It was fairly straightforward. But when you're panicking and your dog is bleeding, I would recommend that you watch that video first, just so you've got an idea on how to deal with it if you're in France or in Europe so that, you know, the sort of steps that you could take if something, God forbid, touch wood, happens to your dog because it's horrible. But it is you can deal with it. It is perfectly possible to deal with overseas. It just takes a little bit of figuring it out. If you've got any other questions that we haven't covered here, by all means, drop them below and I'll do my best to answer them. If you'd like to know more information about travelling either with dogs or without, you might find either of these videos helpful. If you're new to our channel and you'd like to get more motorhome income finding tips for the UK and Europe, by all means, hit subscribe. Thanks very much for watching. I'll see you on the next video.