by Suzy Banks
photographs by Tre Arenz
John Steinbeck took Charley on his search for America. John Muir brought along Stickeen, a little black dog, as he canoed southeastern Alaska. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Scottie, Fala, traveled with the president to Newfoundland to meet Winston Churchill aboard the U.S.S. Augusta to sign the Atlantic Charter. So, why should your dogs — or mine — have to limit their excursions to the local dog park? If you, with your expanse of sweat glands and your ice cubes, dream of jaunts to cooler locales during the Texas summer, just imagine how desperately your furry friend, who can only sweat on his tongue and drinks from a tepid toilet, yearns for mountain air and cool rivers. Almost every year, I’ve taken my dogs to the mountains whether they liked it or not.
Domino went to the Pecos Wilderness and the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe with Richard and me. She had a great time roughing it in the woods, then returning to the luxuries of civilization — lounging on the bed and trotting through the lobby of the historic hotel like a pedigreed poodle. It was much more enjoyable than her first long road trip when she was bitten by a rattlesnake outside Van Horn on the way to Arizona and then, on the way home, threw up chunks of a white leather clog she’d eaten.
Nuke and Barney went camping outside Ouray, Colorado. Nuke was deaf and epileptic and blind in one eye, conditions which may have contributed to her fearlessness — some might say recklessness. She jumped in a raging river outside Steamboat Springs and we fished her out a la Lillian-Gish-on-the-ice-floes just before she spilled over the waterfall. When we stopped at a scenic overlook the next day, even though she was now under heavy leash and collar, Nuke tore off after a vulture, dragging me in tow across the gravel slope, headed for a certain-death plummet. It’s the only time I ever heard Richard scream. If I hadn’t snagged my arm around a scruffy pine, my goofy mutt and I would’ve been pur�ed vulture chow. We’d brought along Nuke’s Valiums to help control her seizures, but I think Richard and I ate them all.
Barney, Sadie, and Hudson went on a whirlwind trip to Durango where the constant hailstorms finally drove us from our tent into our van. The dogs trembled or slept through the deluge. Richard and I filled our glasses with hailstones simply by sticking them out the window and drank scotch on the rocks. This was the trip that turned Hudson against car travel and me against camping.
Last December I attempted to make it up to Hudson by taking him and Sadie to what I thought was a swanky inn in Taos that welcomed dogs. I guess if I ran a glorified motel with paper-thin walls, no hot water, and exorbitant rates, I’d welcome dogs, cats, monitor lizards, Martians, and assorted deviants as long as they paid in advance. The highlight of this trip was our walk through the National Forest on snow shoes. Sadie and Hudson tunneled through the deep powder like gophers, popping their heads out from time to time. I could swear they were laughing. The low point came on Christmas morning when we woke to yet another morning without hot water and a screaming serenade from the family of five in the next room. We packed up the car and hit the road despite the fact we’d already paid for two more nights. Christmas dinner was a can of Vienna Sausages and a tube of saltines from a convenience store in Sonora.
When traveling with a dog, I’ve learned the journey’s not the thing; the destination is. Judging from the plethora of dog travel guides, I’m not the only one who has figured this out. Author Eileen Barish is a veritable Arthur Frommer when it comes to canine travel. Eileen’s Directory of Pet-Friendly Lodging is just that — a directory, like a phone book. The 20,000 hotels, motels, and Bed & Breakfasts throughout the U.S. and Canada are not rated, merely listed. And it was from this list that I choose the dump in Taos. So I heartily recommend a little cross-reference research using “human” travel guides which rank or review. The first hundred pages are devoted to travel tips and canine trivia that read like the Sunday supplement to a small town newspaper. “Take along the book you’ve been meaning to read” and “Avoid using tranquilizers or sedative when driving” are but two of the hundreds of equally banal suggestions under such headings as “27 Things to Know When Driving to Your Destination” or “10 Reasons Why Pets are Good for Your Health.”
By the time Barish wrote Doin’ Texas With Your Pooch, she had at least moved the arbitrary and often redundant advice to the back of the book and concentrated first on the topic at hand — where to take your dog and what to do with your dog in the Lone Star State. While most of the accomodations listed are uninspiring chain motels like Motel 6 and Days Inn, the kind of places you’d stay on your way to somewhere else, and are still unrated, a few jewels sneak into the roster: The Boerne Lake Lodge, The Badu House in Llano, and the Gage Hotel in Marathon. And once you’re wherever you’re going, the book offers descriptive listings of things to do there — city, state, and national parks that allow dogs, almost exclusively on-leash.
I’ve never managed to make it as far as California with any of my dogs, but The Bay Area Dog Lover’s Companion makes me wish I had. Lyle York and Maria Goodavage have written a guide which “tells where dogs are not only allowed but welcomed, embraced, celebrated for the good company they are.” In San Francisco, dogs can ride cable cars, ferries, and buses (if they’re leashed and muzzled), run leash-free in much of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and dine al fresco with you at a number of restaurants, cafes, and coffeehouses. They can go to church at the drive-in service at the First Presbyterian Church of Richmond or run free along the Napa River in JFK Memorial Park. The authors describe and rate parks and beaches in a nine-county area and spice up the listings with tales from their own travails with their dogs, Joe and Dabney, who are thankfully not perfect-angel poodles. Joe ate some woman’s bus transfer on his first bus ride.
Things like this will happen when you travel with dogs. They will embarrass you, frustrate you, and keep you on your toes. They’ll drool on the upholstery, their fur will inevitably land in your travel snacks, and they’ll bay at the hotel maid. But the rewards are great. If nothing else, they slow you down. Their amazement and joy at the simplest things — the drive-through window at McDonalds, the riverside park filled with coded smells, the chance meeting of a French poodle behind the Exxon Station — is contagious.
It seems to me that if you’re locked in a car with your dogs for 10 or 15 hours and you’re very lucky, by the time you reach your destination, some of that dog’s simple passion will have rubbed off on you. Don’t be afraid if you find yourself bug-eyed with delight over nothing more than a Slim Jim and a clean glass of water. You might start driving with your head out the window. You may suddenly want to chase vultures you know you’ll never catch. But just be careful whose butt you sniff.
This article appears in July 25 • 1997 and July 25 • 1997 (Cover).