The Moose Crew – Traveling With Pets
Lots of Nomads travel with their furry friends. Having our pets with us makes the trip more entertaining and enjoyable, and the cold mornings a little warmer with snuggles. We’re no different in that regard. Where we are different is the number – We travel with two large dogs and four cats in our 120 sq ft custom van Moose. You could say we have a full house.
We adore our fur babies and wouldn’t trade any of them, well occasionally we think about trading Cole, but that’s another story. Anyway, meet our crew.
Meet the Crew
Jack is in the neighborhood of 15 and is the senior fellow. He takes cool and aloof to an art form, but he is a master head-butter and JoDana’s personal snuggle buddy. Jack got lost for two weeks in a national forest in Oregon last summer and now never strays too far from the van.
Cole Kitty is about 6 and has been JoDana’s shadow since she rescued his mama and she had Cole and his litter-mates the next day. He’s a big boy and chatty, but he’s also the ultimate adventure kitty. In fact, we’re pretty sure Cole thinks he’s one of the dogs and hates to be left behind on any adventure.
Daisy is our 3 ½ year old black lab. She is obsessed with her tennis balls, is the most loving and snuggly creature and JoDana is most definitely her person (can we say separation anxiety?). Daisy and Cole are best buds and can often be found curled up with each other at nap time.
Alex is a growl box. She’s 3 and very independent, but if there’s a nap spot next to JoDana, odds are Alex is there, growling any time anyone disturbs her. If a mouse corpse is left on the floor at the foot of the bed, odds are it was a gift from Alex.
Toby is proof that we are insane. At a year old, Toby is a short-hair German Shepherd that we got from our Texas friends Cheryl and Ken. While we were visiting them, their sweet foster puppy fell in love with Daisy and, since all the animals naturally prefer JoDana, Calvin wanted a dog of his own. Sorry Calvin, all the animals still prefer JoDana!
And finally we have Bubbles, our Texas Snowpocalypse rescue. Sick and starving, she found us at the Neches River just days before the big freeze of 2021. She is quickly becoming the Ruler of the Roost, is Toby’s buddy, and has Calvin wrapped around her sharply-clawed proverbial finger.
Tips to Traveling with Cats & Dogs
Now that you’ve met everyone, here are some thoughts and tips for traveling with pets.
Harnessing
The first consideration, of course, is their safety as we travel. The cats travel with Calvin in Moose and the dogs with JoDana in Libby the Jeep. The dogs always wear harnesses and are buckled in to keep them from moving around too much and being a distraction, and to prevent them from becoming 70 lb projectiles should I have to stop or maneuver suddenly. Likewise, the cats are always in their harnesses, a lesson we sadly learned when we lost Alex’s mama Sophie early in our travels. The cats are not locked in or crated in the van, but they each have their safe place or cubby and have their leashes attached so we can grab them quickly if necessary. (Note: The cat harnesses are comfortably snug, but still loose enough that they can wiggle out of them if they get snagged or stuck. We always keep spares handy just in case.) For all, travel time equals nap time.
Vet Care
We made sure all were up-to-date on their vaccines and medical care before we started our epic journey. We’ve had no trouble finding willing vets anywhere we’ve been, whether for an abscess or a respiratory infection. We keep several months supply of flea and tick meds on board, plus we have pet first aid supplies, the same as we do for us people. Our hometown vet was very understanding when I described our adventure and she wrote a prescription for pet meds that we can get filled numerous places if needed.
Food
The biggest issue with pet food is storage! We can go through 50 lbs of dog food in no time and those bags are big, likewise food for four cats plus cat litter, and Cole’s on a special diet. We have underfloor storage for bulky stuff and a bin or two on a tray in the back of the van for some supplies, but day-to-day we are surprisingly well-organized. We have a designated shelf just for pet food and supplements. Four sealable containers hold pet food, with room for bowls and treats. The fur babies know the routine and are pretty good about keeping us to their schedule for morning and evening meals and treats.
Toys and Stuff
Another designated pet area is right inside the front door. This custom area includes a shelf that the cats LOVE to sit on right in the front window. Below the cat shelf is a large compartment for the litter box, which being right at the door gets cleaned several times a day. Next to that are two smaller compartments for toys, leashes, and pet health and first aid supplies. The leashes in use any given day are hung on a hook by the door for easy reach.
Safe Restraint
There are times when we need to keep everyone relatively contained for safety and convenience. The dogs are pretty easily secured with up to 15 feet of retractable lead or we set up a run by securing parachord between trees with a pulley system. For the cats we have an 8’ “catio”, which is two 4’ foldable dog crates attached to the side of Moose. We can create two separate spaces if we need to isolate anyone. With blankets, water and a nice shade cover, the kitties are generally content to relax where they can see us and all the activity around camp from a safe place.
Other activities
We recently added bikes and kayaks and the dogs enjoy running alongside the bikes and lounging in the kayaks as we do all the paddling. Cole has even taken a turn on the kayak – I think he’ll be a boating cat before long. The favorite activity is walking and it’s common to have at least 3 of the cats along for our dog walks. And while the tennis balls are mainly for the dogs, they are fair game if the cats don’t mind the competition.
Reuniting
Finally, should we ever be separated from our fur babies, we have written their names and our phone number directly onto collars and harnesses (that’s how Toby was returned after running full speed after a friendly husky belonging to our campground neighbors), and the dogs are microchipped. I also keep up-to-date photos of our pets with us just in case we have to make lost pet fliers. That’s how we got Jackie back after his solo adventure.
UPDATE:
After I wrote this post and before publishing it, we had a change in our fur family. Our sweet Jack, our elder statesman, passed away while we were in Central Oregon. Our consolation is that he was tremendously loved and had an amazing, adventurous and long cat life.
Then there was the miracle of Sophie. Sophie, Alex’s mama, was feral when we rescued the two of them a year before we sold the farm and became nomads. Sophie wandered off before we left our hometown in Oregon. Our friends in the area kept an eye out for her and would see her from time to time and give us updates, but she was very skittish and would never allow anyone close to her, no matter how heroic their attempts.
We returned to our hometown in June to do a little paid work as well as do the roof-raise on our new bus, and hoped we might see her. We were not expecting that, on our second day, she would wander in, jump up on my lap for a sniff and a pet, and never leave again. Sophie is home after nine months of living on her own, and she’s in perfect health and as sweet and loving as ever. She and the new kid, Bubbles, are still working out the pecking order, but everyone is settling in fine.
Conclusion
In the last few weeks we’ve dealt with a dog with digestive issues, deworming the whole crew, and the daily maintenance of a cat with chronic sinus issues. We have two on special diets, we are gently refereeing the reconciliation process between Bubbles and Sophie, and we are managing the daily activities, training and exercise for two very active and energetic dogs.
In other words, it’s been normal.
What is also normal is the evening snuggles and playtime with Sophie, who now sleeps between us most nights, morning greetings from Cole and Bubbles, Alex having taken over the bus as her personal domain, and the eager tail wagging and wet kisses of Toby and Daisy as we play with the ball several times a day.
The number of animals we have with us is actually a factor in building a bigger rig, but even if we were to continue as we are, we would continue to love, care for and travel with all of our fur babies.