Do you make the annual migration from the Great White North to Florida or Texas each fall? Make the trip in your RV or perhaps just driving in the car from one seasonal home to the other? Here are some ideas for you to consider.
First of all, if your pet has never made this trip before, don’t just plan on throwing him into the car at the last minute and taking off on a twenty-four hour drive without some advance planning. If your pet is an experienced road warrior, then you just need to get the food and water together and make a roomy spot for him inside the car and go. If your pet is not an experienced traveller or has anxiety issues about traveling, you should already have been working on that for months in advance. Nonetheless, don’t just expect to load her in the car and take off without some advance preparation. Be prepared to make the trip in legs, a few hundred miles or less at a time, if necessary, then a relaxing stop at a pet-friendly motel before repeating it the next morning. You may have to play it by ear. If the overnight stopover thing doesn’t help, you might have to just get up extra early, gird yourself for the grueling sojourn ahead, and make the rest of the trip in one gigantic marathon trip. Regardless, I do not recommend that you load your pet up with drugs in an effort to make the trip easier on yourself. Those drugs sometimes are safe and effective, sometimes not so safe and not so effective (and more is not necessarily better). Deal with it as best you can this time, and start working on the problem as soon as you’ve gotten to your destination and have given the pet a couple days to acclimate. These ideas may be less an issue if the pet is aboard a motorhome or other RV. Regardless, give it some thought — how much do you know about your pet’s health?
If your pet has a history of any health issues or if she is older, greater than six or seven years old for a big dog, over ten years for a cat or small dog, consider having a thorough physical exam and blood workup done a couple weeks before you intend to leave. Your veterinarian can only glean so much knowledge from a physical exam. A blood workup can sometimes reveal serious trouble waiting in the wings. Pets with subclinical kidney disease and/or congestive heart failure may seem fine while at home in a comfortable environment with no stress and plenty of available drinking water, but I have seen them stressed to the point of death by a distraught owner who had no idea that the trip down to Florida was literally killing their pet. They shove the pet into an unventilated corner of the back seat, withhold the water for the trip (so the pet will not have any accidents, of course), and race down from Minnesota or Ontario in one fell swoop. After a day or two of being here in Florida and the pet simply “not acting right” they decide to bring her to the ER where we find the pet dehydrated and in the advanced stages of decompensated renal failure – and the owner never had a clue! Fifteen hundred dollars later we find ourselves euthanizing a pet that just never had a chance, all simply because of owner ignorance.
Do your best to keep the diet as consistent as possible for the trip. Sudden changes in food and/or water and too many treats (in an effort to quell the dog’s anxious behavior) can lead to vomiting and/or diarrhea, which then can escalate into dehydration, hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, and/or pancreatitis. Stress — and a long car trip is stressful to any pet, whether they are seasoned snowbirds or greenhorns — often plays a major role in the development of this problem.
One other thing to keep in mind — what may be appropriate travel conditions for your pet up north, may actually be dangerous once you’ve left the cold weather behind. I had a dog come in with significant hyperthermia because the owner squeezed the pet carrier in down low on the seat and then piled the car full of other items, smothering the pet carrier and cutting off all ventilation – not such a big deal up north where it simply helped to mitigate the cold temperatures. Once they got to Florida however, the dog could not cool itself down. Remember, dogs self-cool by ventilating the excess heat through their lungs – panting. For this highly efficient process to work, they need plenty of ventilation. That means lots of air circulation and abundant space around the pet and its carrier. Open the windows and/or turn on the air conditioner and make certain the airflow is getting to the pet. Cats are better equipped for handling cramped, stifled quarters than are dogs, but the same still applies.
Remember, stress is a major factor in many disease conditions. Try to make the trip as unstressful as possible. The more your pet freaks out over making a long car trip, the greater the likelihood that it will lead to some health issues. If you start preparing days ahead of time and think about your pet as a significant factor in this trip, not just another article of luggage or furniture, it should go a long way toward averting disaster.