Traveling with a Pet

When we decided to live in Scottsdale, Arizona for two months this winter we knew we wanted to drive so we would have our own vehicle, we could bring more of our own things and we could bring our Maltese / Shih Tzu, Sadie. Sadie has only traveled with us to visit family so traveling long distance with her was going to be a new experience.

We decided that we would take five days to drive the 1,814 miles from Saint Paul, MN to Arizona. As soon as we had our route mapped out, I started searching for pet friendly hotels in each of our stops. I utilized Yelp and TripAdvisor to find the pet friendly hotels and then read reviews to finalize where we would be staying. I found out that most of the pet friendly hotels have specific rooms set aside for guests with pets so we had to book in advance to ensure we had one of those rooms. If you aren’t already aware, there is typically a pet fee of $50 / night.

At our first hotel stop, we brought Sadie’s bed and travel bag with her bowls, food, treats and toys. We unpacked a little and took her for a short walk. Once she had eaten her dinner and seemed settled in the room, we thought we would try a quick trip down to the lobby bar and see how she would handle being alone in a strange hotel room. Well, we didn’t even make it ten feet down the hall before she started frantically scratching on the door. So much for going out to dinner.

From that point on we either ordered room service or we took Sadie with us to pick up dinner to eat in our room. She was just fine being alone in the car, so we were able to go inside restaurants for lunch while we were on the road. Of course, we either parked near a window where we could watch her or one of us periodically went out to check on her.

Traveling with a pet is a little like traveling with children, all of your decisions are made around what works best for them. Luckily, we quickly adopted a routine of going for a nice walk at each stop and then having dinner and cocktails in our room.