Traveling with Dogs: WATER

Traveling with dogs: WATER

IF YOU'RE VACATIONING with your dog(s) (or transitioning to living on the road, as we are right now in an AIRSTREAM trailer ) Airstream Travel bLog

GETTING ENOUGH WATER into the dog(s) is primo important!

  I assume that you observe the fresh water at all times rule for optimal health, at home, but on the road this is more complicated. There are these spill proof bowls that have a sort of clip-on trough for the top and I'll add them to the Canine Health Basics Pet Shop for you, but for me, the fact that they are made of plastic is an issue.
We KNOW that water heated in plastic (or even touching plastic if you're OCD {Obsessive Canine Disorder} like I am) is not good.  It absorbs the broken down chemicals from the plastic and causes hormonal imbalance and cancer in humans and so obviously will in dogs as well.
We use glass bowls at home and stainless steel in the Airstream so the water sloshes out of the bowl when we are traveling.


We mostly travel with the hounds in the Jeep with us because they are black and from Labrador, so they prefer air conditioning to room temperature ANYWAY.

If it's been a cool night, the trailer remains cool when closed up, so in the morning they nap in the trailer on the pull out sofa which is surrounded with throw pillows to cushion the jostling and/or a modified sofa seat cushion I covered for under the dinette. (BTW this is a great tip for a D.I.Y. DogBed, if you are not sewing proficient enough to put a zipper onto a cover, you can just cut a heavy fabric in the shape of the bed and fold it inward like a pillow case. The thickness of the sofa cushion is ideal even for dogs with orthopedic issues, you're recycling something that takes up mega-space in landfill and hey! dogs like lying on sofas don't they?)




The movement of the trailer is too much for them to be comfortable standing and drinking. Of course, we offer water every time we stop and especially after their 'exercise stop' (usually last thing before we hook up or pull out and last thing in the evening before Happy Hour (their second last outing of the day).

After last walks, we make sure the bowl is full of water so that through the evening and before we get back on the road they can top themselves up!

TRAINING TIP: training a "Drink" command.
     Every time your dog takes a drink (for a few days) acknowledge it by saying, "Good Drink Rover, Good Drink, Good Boy" or whatever words of praise are important to him/her, and using a higher pitched voice with some emotion from your chest area to transmit a positive reinforcement of the act of drinking. This attaches a word (drink) to it and enables it to become a command. If you know you won't be stopping much while travelling or need the dog to drink more, (perhaps when sick and dehydrated, at the beach or when elderly, you can remind or encourage him to drink when you want him to.
This is especially important when travelling with young dogs or puppies because you are teaching a whole new skill in the housebreaking realm and since you will be in control of when the next pit-stop is, you will also know and be able to control when what is coming out must go in and vice-versa.

PS. With housebreaking in general or just starting out on the road, a SCHEDULE is the easiest way for the dog to  be assured that there will be regular breaks and it can learn to "hold it" and feel secure that there is no need for panic or "letting go" in the vehicle. Same goes for food and exercise.

Happy Trails...and Tails. :-)