The problem with pets

For those who follow my blog you will know that D1 gave us a dog to begin our NINKER journey - Little Teddy the chihuahua.  Now we love Ted dearly, and to be honest he provides us with a great deal of motivation to often get out when maybe we wouldn't have and of course he tends to keep us active.  He has provided us thus far with so much entertainment and laughter which is good for the soul.  If you haven't watched - The most fabulous adventures of Lil' Ted  One of Teds adventures on youtube, then you should you will see what I mean.

When D2 lived with us, we always had a baby sitter for Teddy when we went off on our journeys and of course we take him on the boat which he loves but now that she has moved out we have to either take him or put him in a kennel, which I am not sure is fair on him, so we have decided to do a road trip with him.

Travelling however takes on a new perspective if you want to take your pet.  While lots of websites have pet friendly accommodation listed (wotif, stayz etc) when you travel with a pet you have to be well organised and do a lot of communication with people prior to leaving to establish exactly how pet friendly they may be - because like a lot of things pet friendly has a wide range of different meanings.

So taking possession of our new SUV this week, we wanted to head North where the days are that 4-5 degrees warmer, try out the new vehicle and we wanted to take Teddy so we understand the process of travelling with a pet.  Generally when we do a road trip we just go and head in the general direction and stop where ever we feel is good for as long as we want to be there - and when its just two of you this is quite easy at this time of the year.  You don't really have to pre-book and generally you can get cheap rates.

It took nearly two days of web searching to establish pet friendly accommodation in the approximate areas we felt we would go to taking into consideration comfort stops etc and the amount of daily travel, we definitely wanted to be on the beach, so Derek could do his metal detecting and I could do some photography, go on walks with Ted and enjoy the beach.  Sounds too easy doesn't it!

I will say after finding the right places, everyone was quick to reply to my emails regarding their particular pet rules and after a weekend of back and forth we finally planned our trip, which ended up changing given there wasn't as many establishments along the journey that where actually pet friendly so while we were planning on going up to Townsville via the coast and back inland there was not much in the pet friendly area after Airlie Beach and nothing inland at all - so my advice would be if you are travelling with a pet and don't have your own caravan 

• check it out prior to leaving - don't just get a list of pet friendly places and hope you can get in as often they only have 1 room that they use as pet friendly, and often they are not allowed inside etc
• communicate with properties and then make your booking
• be prepared for additional costs over what is advertised on websites for cleaning - which I do think is fair enough I wouldn't like to think these places where not properly cleaned after animals had been in there - but it does add to your overall costs

I suppose in a few weeks I will be able to tell you if travelling with a pet is good or bad and no doubt there will be a blog, photos and videos of our trip.  So here is to a new adventure, one I would never have thought I would be doing 12 months ago - but hey nothing we are doing now was in the plan 12 months ago - live dangerously I say and try new things.