Traveling with Pets

Ever get frustrated when your pup just won’t leave you alone? Annoyed when you trip on them when they lay right behide you? Now imagine that in a camper.

Don’t get me wrong- our lives are not complete without our little furry children and we treat them like royalty… but traveling with them definitely adds in some more twists and turns than we anticipated.

First, there’s no escape from an attention-seeking kitty, and our Paco can be beyond needy. This means he is constantly following you, sitting on you, covering you and every possession in cat hair and walking all over every surface of the camper. This includes when we were trying to sleep. Sleeping was exhausting. The bed room did not have a way to completely close it off from the rest of the camper, so our nights consisted of a big ol’ cat prowling around on the bed, walking up and down us, head butting us until we pet him, and our favorite, circling our heads before laying down right by our faces. Yaaaaaay cats. (We seriously do love that lil nut job).

Older dogs in general of course bring their own challenges that require adjustments. For our 12 year old pup, his hips are just not what they used to be… which make any stairs very difficult, if not impossible. That made entering and exiting the camper an issue, one that we had to face multiple times a day. Getting in and out of the truck was also tricky. For the most part, Richard got to get some of his exercise by lifting Benelli up and down multiple times a day. For times when I felt like being an independent woman, I used a fairly substantial dog ramp. It took a fair amount of practice, as well as gluing down carpet to make it more comfortable, but it worked!