Tips for Taking Road Trips With Your Dog
Markus looking ahead in the car on a road trip
I never thought I'd be in a position to be writing a travel recommendation article so soon. Roughly 10 months ago, we adopted our dog Markus from Korea and we were told that there's a high chance he was going to be an aggressive dog. Knowing this, we committed to working with him through his tendencies as we adopted him. In doing so, we knew that we'd have to put some of the things we normally enjoy doing over the weekends on hold as we worked to train him.
Surely, adopting Markus has changed the way we spend our time and weekends, but surprisingly, one of the things that didn't change too much was our traveling. My wife and I love traveling throughout the Pacific Northwest to discover new cities and communities that it has to offer. Of course, there were things that we had to change like the hotels and the rooms we're allowed to book now, but in terms of going places, having Markus with us didn't change that.
At this point, we've already taken a few trips with Markus and we've had some people ask us about traveling with a reactive dog. What are things we look out for in a hotel? How do we leave him at the hotel without the worry that he might be continuously barking? We wanted to share our top tips on taking road trips with your dog.
Dog-Friendly Hotel and Pet Fees
If you didn't already know, not all hotels allow pets and some of the ones that do have certain restrictions that you'll have to pay attention to. If you go to a hotel's amenities section, it'll usually be listed there. Some hotels only allow 1 dog, some allow up to 2 and some have restrictions on the weight as well (I've commonly seen 50 lbs). Sometimes hotels do not allow you to leave the dog in the room if you're not there with them. Beyond looking for dog-friendly hotels, make sure to double these restrictions so they fit with your traveling plans.
Generally, hotels will also charge a pet fee and this is something you're going to have to really pay attention to. Depending on where you're staying, pet fees can be as low as $15/stay and as high as $100/night. It is important to differentiate this early on because everything factors into the cost of the room and you don't want to book a slightly cheaper room to have to pay a much higher dog fee. Create a list, calculate the costs including the fees and decide from there.
Before booking your room, it'll be worth double checking that the pet fee is coming from them (or from their actual site). This is so that if they give you a different price, you can always reference back to what their website says. There are sites that'll break down these cost for you from people who have stayed at the hotels, but if it's not coming from the hotel, you don't know if it's up to date, so you might as well check with the hotel if you don't want to be surprised.
The reason for the cost is usually cleaning - even if your dog doesn't make a mess or shed, it's a consistent fee that dog owners just have to pay for. We've had one hotel go above and beyond and have left bowls, treats and a bed for the dog, but it is definitely not standard procedure, so don't expect anything for the cost that you're paying for!
But Be Cautious of the Super Dog-Friendly Hotel
In one of our trips, we stayed at a hotel that branded themselves as a dog-friendly hotel. It was all over their advertisement and their staff was indeed very good with dogs. They knew how to greet dogs properly and you can tell it's part of their training. It was noticeably different as there were things that they did that other hotels normally don't think of and as a dog owner, it's a nice feeling.
The downside of having a super dog-friendly hotel is that because they get so many people checking in with dogs, they often end up dedicating an entire floor for all the people with dogs so they're able to contain the sound for the other guests. It also helps from a cleaning perspective to know that any room from the floor will likely have had dogs in it. From the hotel's perspective, it makes sense why they need to do it. From a dog owner's perspective (especially of a reactive dog), there are pros and cons of hotels that do it this way.
When you're staying at a hotel where you know everyone else on that floor has a dog, there's comfort in knowing that if your dog barks, you're not the only one. In our case, Markus can sometimes be triggered by the sound of footsteps or voices. The downside, then, in similar fashion is that if your dog is reactive like ours, it might end up barking when other dogs in other rooms bark.
An example of this was when we got off the elevator at one of these hotels. As we walked to our hotel room, the tag on Markus' collar was making a clinking noise and we could hear dogs rushing to their hotel door and barking at us. This one dog barking can set off a number of other dogs along the hallway and suddenly you have multiple dogs barking at one time. And this was only in the first 30 seconds after getting off the elevator. Imagine this happening multiple times in the middle of the night.
Requesting to Be Away From the Elevator
For reactive or territorial dogs, this is perhaps the best thing you can be doing if you want a good night's rest. For Markus who has that guard dog mentality, sounds like doors closing or voices outside can trigger him to bark in the middle of the night. This means that if people are returning to their room late in the middle of the night and Markus hears them, there's a chance he'll bark at them. This isn't fun for us or the people in the rooms next to us.
In one of the hotels we stayed at, we had been given a room that was at the far end of the hallway and away from the elevator. That was by far the most peace we've had in hotel a room with Markus. Being in that room meant that we were far away from the noise and the traffic, which was perfect. In the entire time we were at that hotel, we never heard other voices or footsteps from our room and Markus never barked.
This is an extra step, but if your dog tends to bark and you want some more peace or just be able to sleep through the night, this is worth doing. While (or even after) we're booking a hotel, we normally give them a call to request a room that's away from the elevator because our dog tends to bark at voices and footsteps and they're generally great at accommodating us. It's a win-win because they don't want their other guests to have noise complaints either!
Getting a Suite
Okay I know this suggestion is luxurious living and it costs more, but whenever we've had the chance to stay in a suite, the benefit of staying in one for a reactive dog has been so great. Sometimes, the difference in cost will surprise you. I've seen suite rooms go for less than $10/night more than a standard room, so you might as well double check.
With a reactive dog, having a suite helps a lot because it is essentially an extra room within your hotel room, which means an extra wall or layer from the front door. If your dog is like ours and noises of footsteps, voices or door slamming triggers him into barking, being able to keep them in the room inside the room goes a long way for keeping the noise level down.
White Noise, the TV or the Air Conditioner
Another way for us to drown out the noise from the outside is to use the TV or the air conditioner to create a sort of white noise. If the weather is hot and we need to use the air conditioner anyways, we usually position Markus' bed or blanket close to the air conditioner so that the noise from the door is drowned out. In this same way, if it's not hot enough for the air conditioner, we'll turn the TV on instead to mask the sound. We find that these types of sound masking to be fairly effective, even if we're out of the hotel room.
The Doggy Cam
Whether we're going for dinner or just want to be out by ourselves, there are times when my wife and I have to leave Markus in the room. Knowing that he can bark continuously at anytime, we're sometimes not the most comfortable leaving him alone for too long for fear that he's barking too long and we or the hotel is getting complaints.
For this reason, we now have a dog monitor of sorts where we can keep an eye on him from a distance and be alerted if Markus is moving around or even barking. At the very least if we know he's being disruptive, we can quickly go back to the hotel before it gets out of hand. So far, we've tried two different solutions.
The Wyze Cam
This is the preferred option, but it's not the one we can always use. The Wyze Cam is a very high quality camera that gives us a wide range (the one we use has a full 360 degree range, 1080p full HD and 2-way audio so you can even talk to your dog) and it comes at a very reasonable cost. We definitely recommend just picking up one of these, setting it up in the hotel room and you can watch your dog even when you're miles away. Then if anything happens like movement or any barking, you'll be alerted on your phone.
Do note that if you're going to use this, you're going to need data or Wifi on your phone and also at the hotel.
Where we're not able to use the Wyze Cam is if the hotel Wifi uses an agreement page to login. The Wyze Cam requires you to log into the Wifi through the Wyze app on your phone, but if the hotel uses a different system like rerouting you to a page where you need to agree to their terms and agreements before proceeding, we have yet to find a way around that. If anyone knows how to bypass this, we'd love to hear it! For now, when that happens, we usually fall back to our older and less dynamic option, the Dog Monitor app.
Dog Monitor App
The Dog Monitor App is a basic monitor app where you designate one end as the "Dog Station" and the other end as the "Person Station". This method requires the use of two devices and the incredibly frustrating part is that you have to pay for each device you download the app on.
For example, the Dog Station is the one that you position at the hotel to watch the dog. In our case, we use a tablet, since we'll likely be carrying our phones with us. The app then taps into the camera of the tablet and it relays the feed back to a second device (in our case, our phones). If there are any spikes in noise level or if the app detects motion, a notification is sent to the phone where you can watch the feed to see what's happening.
Since it is using the camera of a device like a tablet, it is a lot less dynamic. Unlike the Wyze Cam, you obviously won't be able to move the camera around. The view that you get is essentially what your device is able to see, so it can't move and you have to position it someplace where you can capture a wider view. If you're expecting to be out a while, you might even have to position it near a plug as well, which may limit where you have to put it.
For this reason, we've had some struggles with this app. We find that having to plug the tablet in limits what we can see and since most of the cameras on devices like tablets aren't wide enough to capture the whole room, we end up just having to hope that Markus stays in his bed. As a small hack, one thing we do is attach a wide angle lens to the tablet camera so that it can capture a wider area. The functionality of the app is fairly basic (it is just for monitoring, after all) and the design isn't great, but it gets the job done.
Since this method only requires the devices to be connected to the Internet and most of the hotels we go to come with complimentary Wifi, this is always our fallback in case the Wyze Cam method doesn't work.
These are just some of our suggestions and tips that we've found useful while traveling with a reactive dog. It is an absolute joy and privilege to be able to bring our dog with us on our trips and we hope that sharing some of these tips with you means that you get to take more road trips with your dog as well!
We’re so grateful for your support of The Markus Project. We mostly choose our locations through searching and word of mouth. If you know of a park, trail or location you think we should check out, please share it with us. We’d love to know!
