Why I Travel with My Pets

Since this is going to be a blog about pet-friendly travel, I guess I should start out by explaining why I travel with my pets.

One of the reasons why I started out bringing my pets along on business trips was because I was having a hard time finding care for them while I was gone.  I really only had two options — kenneling them every time I went somewhere, which is often, or finding someone who could house-sit for me regularly.

Perhaps if I only traveled a couple of times a year, I would have been okay with one of those options.  I’m not crazy about most of the kennels in my area, but I could have dealt with them on an infrequent basis.  I probably could have also found a friend or family member willing to watch the house and all its occupants for me a few times a year.

The proble is, I travel too frequently for either of those options to be feasible.  For one thing, kenneling a pet can be very expensive if you travel on a regular basis.  I also don’t know anyone who would be willing to practically live at my house half the time and watch the pets.

So I decided to take them with me, instead of leaving them at home.  It started out as just being one trip, and then just one more, and after several months had passed I realized it had turned into more of a lifestyle.  I don’t take every pet every time — the cats are pretty self-sufficient at home for short trips, with food and water enough to last the trip — but I almost always have at least one dog with me, and usually both.

Although it started out as mostly a practical decision, traveling with my pets has turned into something else entirely.  It’s about keeping them with me, spending as much time with them as I can.  If I didn’t take them with me, I simply wouldn’t see as much of them!  I already had them when I got my job, and I wasn’t about to get rid of them just because my work means that I travel a lot.  So to my mind, traveling with my pets turned out to be the only workable decision I ever could have made.

So that’s why I take them with me.  It’s not always easy, and there are things you have to think about (which I plan to address in this blog).  But it’s rewarding to be able to spend time with my pets, and of course it makes life a continuous adventure — at least, that’s what my dogs tell me!