Pet Travel – How to Travel with Your Pet
Have you ever wanted to go on holiday with your pet, but were unsure of what the best means of pet travel was? If this is the case, you might be interested in a few tips that will help you travel with your pet in a manner that will suit both you and the animal. In fact, you can even travel long distances with your animals in a relatively safe and comfortable manner. The need to leave your pets behind when you go away is no longer relevant in today’s modern technological era, where you can get almost anywhere by car or by plane.
One thing you will need to consider when you are looking into pet travel is finding a way to transport your animal that will least affect you or it. If you have a smaller caged animal such as a rabbit, guinea pig, or hamster, and are travelling by car, then this is not a particularly big problem as you will just have to move their cage into the car and drive to your destination. The same can be said for engaging in pet travel with birds as they have their nesting areas, and if you take their bird cage with you the only thing you will need to worry about is remembering to cover their cages. This is important because birds can get stressed by riding in cars and preventing them from seeing the changing scenery will help alleviate their reactions. One thing that must be said though, is that these kinds of animals cannot normally fly by plane without receiving special permission.
While you will have to have a health verification form to make sure your animal can fly, it is still good that after you decide to engage in pet travel to take your animals to the vets in order to make sure they are healthy enough for whatever form of pet travel you are going to engage in. Cats can have an especially difficult time with pet travel as they get very agitated quite easily and can have problems with intestinal upset (i.e. vomiting and diarrhoea), screaming, and even in severe cases self-mutilation. Because of this, you might want to make sure you go to your pet’s doctor beforehand and get some medications to help them relax while you travel. This is not an uncommon procedure and your veterinarian should be able to help you successfully make the trip as easily as possible.
Dogs can be good travelling companions, as long as you have set aside an area for them to have room to lie down and are able to stop and let them walk every so often. If you are flying, then it may be possible for you to travel in the cabin with smaller dogs, while larger ones will have to fly in the cargo compartment. This can be problematic, and many owners also choose to offer the dogs that will be flying this way a tranquiliser to help them overcome any anxiety they may have about travelling separately from their owners. All in all, pet travel can be a nice experience, as long as you know what you are up against.
