Preparing to Take a Puppy Traveling
A few weeks ago, a new member joined our pack! Her name is Eleanor, and she is a pure breed Siberian Husky with an agouti coat color, sometimes called wolf coat. This is not our first time being a three dog family, and it's not our first time preparing to take a puppy camping, but this is an excellent opportunity to tell you some of our tips and tricks for camping in an RV with a new puppy!
Introduce your Puppy to your RV
The most important part of taking your puppy on an RV adventure is introducing them to your RV. We like to do this before we even go on a trip. Letting the puppy explore this new area is a great way for them to become familiar with it. Usually, we will take a handful of treats, go out to the RV with the puppy and just let her check things out. It's good for her to sniff everything and get familiar with it. Turn on the furnace, AC and anything else that you normally run in your rig. Just turn everything on and allow your puppy to hear those new noises. We use treats as rewards for our dogs, and as we do this, we will constantly reward them with treats. Bringing the other two dogs out to the RV is another step we take. Once the new puppy sees that the big dogs love the RV, it will help her by reading their body language and make her feel more comfortable. We do all of this a few times before we will even take her for her first adventure with the rig.
Bring Puppy Supplies
Our RV is usually stocked with items for our adult dogs, but when we add a puppy, we need to make sure we have some puppy supplies. This will include extra chew toys, a puppy blanket, calming pheromone spray, which can help get a puppy comfortable in a new place, extra bowls, backup ID tags and a first aid kit for dogs. Before our first trip, I go through all of these items to ensure we are fully stocked!
Take Your Puppy To the Vet
It's not something many people will think of, but you also need to make sure that your puppy is up to date on all of their vaccines, as well as flea and tick protection. If they are microchipped, make sure that is up to date as well. You won't need to do this for every trip, but you want to make sure they are prepared to be outside, in new areas and possibly be around other dogs.
Do a Test Run
Remember, all of this is very new to your puppy and sometimes, doing a short test run can be a great way to ensure your puppy has a positive camping experience. This might be a mock trip out in your yard or just one overnight trip not far from home. A lot of things happen when you go on an RV trip—riding in the car, getting in and out, learning how to be in the RV, how to be on a picket line while outside of the RV, all of these are new experiences for a puppy and we want to make them as positive as we can, to ensure that camping is amazing and fun for you and the latest addition.
This is a very basic rundown of some of the things we try to do before taking our first trip with a new puppy. Over time, your new puppy will learn more and more about how awesome camping is with each trip. Our older dogs freak out if they even see us hook the camper up to our vehicle. They know what camping is, and it won't take long before Eleanor figures it out!
