If you had told Bill a year ago that we would have a dog of our own, and I would therefore be writing an article about “Traveling with Dogs,” he would have likely said: That’s never going to happen.

(Note: Bill…not a dog person. Yep. Not so much.)

But last August, a cute, tiny Shih Tzu was born, and in October we brought her home with us. Her name is ZuZu, and she is the ABSOLUTE CUTEST thing you have ever seen. (Unfortunately the camera only seems to capture about 70% of her adorableness. You’ll just need to meet her in person.)

I am not an expert on traveling with dogs (certainly not yet!), so I will be sure to update this site as new, helpful ideas come to mind. But this past weekend, we stumbled across something so helpful to us that I want to share it with you!

Bill was staying in a hotel in Miami for a couple of days for work. Since I wasn’t too far away (at an RV Park in Orlando), I decided to drive down and meet him. I knew the cats would be fine staying in the coach without me for a day or two, but not ZuZu. Though she is trained to “go potty” indoors on her Piddle Place, I would of course never leave her for that long.

Unfortunately, the hotel Bill was at didn’t allow pets. So at first it looked like we might drop ZuZu off at a kennel. She is so easy going that she would have been fine there I’m sure. But Bill found a better option: DogVacay.com.

Are you familiar with DogVacay? If not, and you have a dog, it is definitely worth checking out since things come up, and sometimes we need someone else to take care of our much-loved pets while we have to be/want to be somewhere that they cannot. Most of us will agree that leaving our pups somewhere where they are caged all day and have very little human contact is not ideal. That is why DogVacay is so great! With DogVacay, the host parents brings your dog into their home and give your pup lots of attention and care. Each host goes through a five-step screen process, and the payments and reservations are handled simply and easily online.

We have only had this one experience (so far) with this service, but we could not have been happier with how it unfolded. It turned out that the host parents were just a short walk down from our hotel. ZuZu was living in style in a beautiful beachfront condo with a young couple and their Boston terrier/pug mix. We received several updates and pictures assuring us that ZuZu was having fun and doing well in their care. How great is that – to get updates and pictures of your pup when you can’t be with them!

We will definitely use this service again, and I will keep this article updated with the experiences we have. If you have used DogVacay for your furry fam, please comment below. We would love to hear what you think of it!