When pets travel: Secrets to traveling.
Every pet has to travel once in a while, whether it is to the vet, grandma’s house for easter or to a new home in a new country. Not much can be done about visiting the vet, and as for grandma’s house we would rather have the family all together for Christmas including our four-legged children. Cats might be excluded from the travel plans, we all know cats prefer to stay home with the couch and television. But our dogs prefer to go with us no matter where we are going even if it is to just check the mailbox for that package.
While there is nothing you can do to make sure your pet enjoys their travels there are certain things you can do to make you feel better about them having to go through with it all. After all we can’t just let them live with the new family that buys your old home, they have their own pets.
Here are the best things to do for your pet when they must travel.
- Get them acquainted with their new travel kennel before the trip. Simply leave the door
open and place toys, a blanket, some biscuits or treats inside. Perhaps get them to take naps
in the kennel and even leave them in it for brief periods of time. - Leave a worn t-shirt or sock with the kennel so their is somethng of yours traveling with them.
Your scent will be comforting even though you are not present. - We always hide biscuits in their blankets so they have a chance for a mid flight snack. Sometimes they
find the biscuits and eat them before we have a chance to seal the kennel, sometimes they don’t. It makes us feel better knowing there are some biscuits hidden, similiar to when you hide treats in your childeren’s lunch box hoping they don’t discover it on the bus to school. - Never feed your pet large meals before a trip, we have all know what happens after that. It is better to slim down their meal the night before and maybe a handful of kibble for breakfast. We prefer to have pets travel a bit hungry and land ready for dinner or lunch opposed to travel their entire trip in a soiled kennel and blanket. Most pets do travel well and will prefer not to soil their kennel unless the ate a ham bone the night before because mom felt bad about the impending trip.
- Provide a travel portion of their regular food for their trip to be used if pet has a connecting flight or comfort stop between journey legs. Providing this familiar food helps reduce the stress of disrupting their diets as much as possible, we all know finding food we like while on the road or traveling is difficult.
