Traveling with a pet can be a disaster if you don’t take the right measures for it prior to setting out. If you’re having to travel with your furry friend and haven’t done so before, read this post till the end to get some useful travel advice.
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Tip # 1: Remember to Pack Your Pet’s Stuff
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While it’s not easy to be forgetful when packing your own stuff, you could miss packing the necessities for your pet. Before you finalize your packing arrangements and set out on your trip, be sure that you have all of your pet’s stuff with you. Here are some things that you can check:
- Pet food
- Water
- Collar or harness
- Bedding
- Cleaning material
The last one is pretty important. The troubles of train travel and air travel can be worsened if you don’t have the right stuff with you to keep your pet calm and clean.
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Tip # 2: Keep Your Pet in their Carrier
This one is obvious if you’re traveling via the airlines, but you also have to keep your pet in their carrier when traveling by car or train. Letting them out may feel harmless, but it’s never a good idea.
Take cats, for example.
If you’re taking a feline along and if you happen to let it out in your car, it will ruin your car seats, and upholstery, and badly scratch your arms and legs in its panicky fit.
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Tip # 3: Secure the Carrier Properly to the Seat
After placing your pet in the carrier, you also have to make sure that you tie it down properly so that it doesn’t bounce and bump around when the car turns or speeds up.
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You can normally secure the carrier using the seatbelt in your car. Pet carriers made especially for cars usually come with slots that you can use for inserting the seatbelt. And even if there are no holes or spaces made particularly for the seatbelt, you can easily make some sort of makeshift arrangement yourself.
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Tip # 4: Don’t Travel with the Fickle Pets
If you want to go on vacation with your pet, don’t take one along that doesn’t do well on the road. In other words, if you have a pet that normally stays calm and collected during car rides, you can take them for a longer excursion as well. But if you have, say, a cat that loses itself even if you step out the front door, you’ll be better off leaving it behind.
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Traveling with such pets can be a nightmare during flights. Some airlines allow smaller pets to be carried inside the cabin if their carrier can fit under the seat. Should you take a fickle pet along with you inside the cabin, you’ll make the other passengers (and yourself) sick with all the yowling and howling…depending on what the thing is.
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Tip # 5: Check with Your Hotels Before Leaving
If you are traveling with pets, be sure to call the hotels you’re planning on staying at to confirm whether they allow pets or not. The same applies to rentals. If there are any sort of ‘No Pet’ rules in your accommodation, you’ll have to make other arrangements.
Conclusion
Traveling with pets can be inevitable in a lot of situations. For example, you could be moving to a new place or you could have no one back home to take care of them in your absence.
If you find yourself in any of these circumstances, you can follow the tips given above to make sure your trip goes nice and smooth.