RV FEATURE
Fortunately, a little common sense, courtesy and
planning should ensure that your trip with your
dog is stress-free with as minimal impact on the
environment and fellow travellers as possible.
Tim Smith, comedian, television presenter and an
old hand when it comes to travelling with dogs,
refers to it as ‘dog management’.
“The dog is part of the family,” he said. “To not
take it is like saying, ‘I’m going to leave one of the
kids home, let’s take two kids but the third one
has to stay behind; it’s just not an option’.”
Here are our five ‘rules’ for travelling with a dog…
1. PLAN YOUR STAY
Know before setting off where you will be
stopping that night, making sure that your place
of accommodation is happy to have your four-
legged friend stay as well. If you’re free-camping,
this is doubly important as you simply can’t bring
dogs into national parks.
More and more holiday parks, however, have
become dog-friendly, realising it’s better to
embrace dogs and their owners, with sensible
policies in place, than to reject them.
“Some parks will even provide dog-friendly
cabins,” Tim said. “Others provide a dog
pen, where the dog must stay when it’s out of
the caravan.
“We invested in a 10m leash just because different
caravan parks have different rules. You’re lucky if
the park owners are dog owners too as they are
very sensible when it comes to dog management.”
2. BE NICE
Not all travellers like to be around dogs, especially
if they have young children. And that’s fair enough.
As a responsible pet owner, it’s important that
you respect their opinion and keep your animal
appropriately restrained. Never let your dog off
the leash to explore, unsupervised, a holiday park
or natural environment.
Get to know other dog owners, too. As Tim said,
“If you’re nice to people at happy hour, they
might look after your dog for you while you go off
exploring. We once looked after a man’s kelpie
and they later helped us with our dog. We would
never leave the dog by itself for a day, as that
would be bad dog management.”
Also, it would be bad dog management to simply
leave your dog tied to the awning arm while you
duck up to the shops. Take it with you.
If children arrive to pat your dog, supervise the
interaction. Through no fault of their own, kids
aren’t always as gentle as the dog would like and
it might react in an unexpected way.
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