Holidaying With An Anxious Dog

Last week we took Roo away for her first holiday. A week down by the sea in Dorset. Now travelling with a dog can be challenging at the best of times, let alone if that dog is anxious!

We had booked our trip long before we knew of Roo's anxiety or any of her behavioural issues had reared their ugly heads. In hindsight perhaps we should have waited to book until she was a little older, she was only 4 months when we booked it, seemed like it would be fine as she would be almost a year when we went.

Nevertheless, we cracked on and did it, kind of.

Was it easy? No. Was it relaxing? Not really. Were there great moments? Yes. Were there absolutely horrible moments? Yes. Would be do it again? Probably not right now.

With Roo's anxiety, she is very triggered by noises, typically people walking by the house. She is like this at home, so being like this away was no suprise. It did however mean that we had to plunge the downstairs of our cottage into darkness, keeping the curtains and windows shut to reduce the noise and stop her from being able to see people. This did help. We also put her crate in our room so she would feel safer sleeping at night. At home, she sleeps downstairs. Again this helped, but the noise of the seagulls on the roof and swarking set her off at around 5am every morning.

Roo's lead walking is not great and now we are no longer using chuck it balls with her, her offlead recall needs work too. For that reason we brought a retractable lead for the trip. It would allow us to give her a bit more freedom but still have control. 6/10 for this. She probably needed more training on it to stop her from running to the end of the line and pulling, however the more she wore it the better she got. We also practiced our loose lead walking and even though she had more freedom on the retractable, she knew once the shorter lead was on where she needed to be, some of the time.

This is about where the positives of the trip end. Roo's people reactivity was through the roof, chasing people and barking at them. Any offlead time she did have was short lived. Most places were busy even at 7am! We just couldn't avoid the crowds. The beaches in the jurassic coast are also not the best if you want lots of open space and freedom. Very spoilt in Norfolk with our wide, long open flat beaches.

Roo also had two seizures whilst we were away. One on the first night we got there and another on the day we decided to leave, which was two days early. We had all had enough by that point.

Getting off the paddleboards at Lulworth cove, Roo spotted a person walking near by and chased them, barking at them. It took us ages to get her back and the man was very unhappy, even threatening to kick her. Our fault but the man also overreacted and wasn't making the situation any easier by throwing his hands around near Roo trying to scare her. It was then that we knew all our buckets were overflowing and there was no way to reduce them staying here.

A sad end to the trip but some very important lessons learnt.

Before taking your dog away, please make sure they are ready and can handle it. We didn't even really consider that staying in a new place would stress Roo out as much as it did, we were there with her, surely that would make her feel safe.