traveling with three dogs

We got back from our trip to CO last night. Traveling with three dogs was interesting, and definitely a learning experience. I am VERY glad I bought a second car-sized crate before we went. Jun always rides crated. Lok and Elo are both great loose, but it was a huge sanity-saver to only have to deal with one of them loose at a time. Two crates fit perfectly in the back of my truck and Lok and Elo switched off during the drive.

Elo impressed me greatly on this trip! Not once did he react to a moving car, no matter how close to him they were!!! He only barked at motorcycles when they drove by us on the road. He did react to people in the hotel parking lot a couple times, but stopped that fairly quickly. During the competition days, he mostly stayed at the hotel, but near the end of one day I went and picked him up and brought him to the field. I carried him around on my shoulder for awhile, since he is not reactive when he's being carried, and just let him take in the sights. Then I finally set him down and let him hang out on the ground for a few minutes. We didn't try to walk around at all. We just worked on eye contact and LAT. Another dog walked towards him and he reacted, but recovered quickly, and after that was able to do LAT with other dogs sitting nearby without reacting. He was attentive to me when I called his name and sat or laid down calmly the whole time. I only gave him a few minutes, then picked him up and carried him back to the car, as I wanted to quit while he was successful.

Lok nearly got us kicked out of the hotel due to his barking, which caused Elo to howl. Pretty sure they woke up everyone in the hotel on Sunday morning at 7:30 and I learned that I cannot leave Lok loose while Elo is crated. I knew that, but haven't had them in that situation for so long that I forgot. Lok came with me wherever I went for most of the trip.

Other than that, they were pretty good dogs. It was a lot to handle, but we managed pretty well. It's good to be home though.