In today’s episode I’m talking with Mary Peterson Cook about RV travel and RV life on the road with kids and dogs. As summer winds down, you might be hitting the road for one last adventure before school begins. RV travel is a fantastic option for families with kids and dogs, but there are some safety issues that you should know about ahead of time. So whether you need to hear this now or before a summer adventure next year, don’t miss this engaging discussion.
Topics on this episode include:
- RV travel with kids and dogs
- Managing a small space with kids and dogs
- Helping dogs and children make good choices around each other
- Safely navigating campgrounds with unfamiliar (and unpredictable) people and dogs
- Not all dogs are suitable for life on the road or in campgrounds
Listen to the episode
About Mary Peterson Cook
Mary Peterson Cook is the adventure-loving momma to one human boy and two fur boys living and working on the road fulltime!
She is a former teacher that yelled more than she likes to admit and she firmly believed in corporal punishment… Luckily for her son and her family, they were living abroad when she became a mother and that created the space and the time to really evaluate what they believed and valued.
That journey led her to parenting from connection and curiosity. And as she healed her own generational traumas, she started helping others do the same!
Now she helps parents just like yourself break generational traumas and find confidence and connection in their parenting and/ or homeschooling journeys!
You can find more about her and her programs at her website.
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p.s. If you are a dog pro who wishes you had a little more confidence with clients who are adopting or expecting kids or who have children already, get on the waitlist for The Pooch Parenting Coach Collective. It’s a supportive membership for dog professionals that offers live zooms, made-for-you handouts to give to clients with kids, and an interactive Facebook group.
Podcast Transcript
Welcome, Mary.
So talk to us a little bit about what it means to live on the road full-time, what that actually looks like for you and what led you and your family to that lifestyle. So what led to our lifestyle is I am just, I got itchy feet. I cannot stay in one place for very long. I have realized that by year three I am done, I’m ready to move on somewhere. So at first we just moved abroad, we moved to Hong Kong. The reason we chose Hong Kong, you know, good pay. English was one of the, the legal languages, the, and then our dogs, this was the big one.
We’ve traveled very slow, we’ve traveled fast, and now we basically do seasons. So we’ll do a summer season somewhere, and then we’ll do a winter season usually in Florida. But, you know, we’re also gonna venture out west and it’s, we do it this way because the community is amazing, but also because your home is with you. So I don’t have to worry about, you know, does this hotel room or Airbnb accept my dog? You know, it’s just, he’s always in my home. Yeah. And while there are some rules to campgrounds, 99% of them accept dogs, so it’s not usually a huge deal. Yeah, yeah.
Michelle’s RV travel experience
It’s interesting. At the beginning of the pandemic, we bought a travel trailer and it was the first time we’d ever done anything like that. We rented one once a few months before that and took a small trip and we thought, yeah, this is so much fun. And then we started looking and then, you know, the pandemic happened. And it’s actually kind of interesting because we now live in Central Oregon. And the way we got here was because we actually drove our trailer up on an adventure. We stayed, and you and I had talked about this before we started recording, we stayed at a thousand trails campground that was beautiful. It was in the woods and it was gorgeous, and it was spread out and still felt really peaceful. We weren’t on top of each other, which I really liked. And we had, we were literally in the woods and we liked it so much and found out that we could leave our trailer there for a super affordable rate if we joined as a member. So we literally decided we’re gonna just leave our trailer here.
We were gonna have to pay to store it back at home anyway, so I’d rather leave it in the woods. And then we would come back and forth just driving the truck without schlepping the trailer attached to it much easier. And we called it our, we called it our cabin. So we would go back to the Bay Area, come stay in our trailer, our cabin as we called it, in, in Central Oregon. And I loved it a lot. But our trailer’s very small. It’s 19 feet tip to toe or whatever. It’s little, we do have like a, a bedroom with a curtain. That’s how you separate the bedroom. And then there’s like the, there’s one part that pushes out to make it bigger where the kitchen table is.
And my husband had to work from that kitchen table, and I did too. When I saw clients, it was a very tight space. And it’s great, but not for super long amounts of time together. Yeah. ’cause you can’t really do much. And when we came in the winter, there’s just nowhere to go. If it’s freezing out. You’re either in your, sitting on your bed, sitting at the kitchen table or freezing your buns off outside. And so that’s when I started looking at houses. And that’s, anyway, now we actually live here, which is crazy, but Glen just went to the trailer yesterday, in fact, to check it out. It’s in, we’re storing it somewhere. And he’s like ready to go because we have a lot of bad smoke from wildfires.
And so he wants us to, get it in work in condition again, so that we can just up and get outta here when the it’s smoky. And it’s fun. And I agree with you that when the dogs are comfortable in a place that that then it’s just much easier because you have that routine and that level of comfort. But you and I both had a shared experience in which there were dogs that chased us in these campgrounds.
Dog Attack to her child in a Campground
You had a pretty tough experience. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? I’ve had a few tough experiences. So let me preface this by saying, I grew up with dogs. I grew up with rescue dogs, my parents did dogs and rescue. And so I have seen like the most scared, most aggressive dogs.
You know, I, I’m not, I’m typically not afraid of dogs. I was the one that would find the stray and bring it home, right? Like, this was me. I’m not someone that’s gonna sit there and just be whatever. Every little dog that’s like barking at me. However, two years ago, my son was four at the time and was mauled in the campground. He wa he, we, he had already met the dog. We had very strict routines on, you know, how you approach a dog. You ask for permission, you wait for permission. And even at four years old, he was 99% of the time good about doing that.
He loved dogs, still does. However, he had already met this dog. And then their four, him and this little girl were playing. The mom and I were talking mom. And she went to her camper, which wasn’t very far away at all. And mom said she could see them from where she was to go get water, which was outside the camper.
They weren’t supposed to go in. But then as four year olds do, they get an idea in their head. And she opened the door for my son, I guess, to maybe go see the dog or go see a toy, something. And when he went in, the dog mauled him. And when I say mauled, it wasn’t a warning snap.
It wasn’t like a, Hey, get outta here. It was, I almost lost my son. I just, luckily the mom was able to rescue him. And there was a doctor that heard me screaming and was able to, you know, get him covered up. And we were luckily in an area, we were at a thousand trails actually, and they were near one of the best hospitals with the best children’s plastic surgeons.
So he’s okay most of the time. You wouldn’t even know now. Right. But yeah, we had to, we had to go through that and we had to experience like really work through our feelings and our fears while living in campgrounds with a bunch of other dogs. And That’s terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. We don’t go to dog parks anymore.
Well, it’s hard because even though some of these campgrounds have decent sized spots where you live on this spot where there’s a bit of a buffer of space around your trailer or your camper, there’s, they’re neighbors. It’s just like living on a street where there are neighbors Yes. Where there’s house and a little bit of grass or plants and then another house.
Containing Dogs in a Campground
Right? So it’s similar to that. But some people are less responsible. Obviously there are other people, I know that at our campground where we were, there were people that would sometimes put out like a, a line with a stake in the ground or whatever. And the dog would be able to be outside on a tether and have however long the tether was of a distance where it could just walk around.
Which, you know, is fine when you don’t have fencing. That’s a, a great way to do it. But the problem is, if you have a child or if for some reason the dog somehow pulls the stake out of the ground or whatever that, that you’re kind of relying on good judgment either on the dog or you or your kid to not get too close because the dog is just out there.
And usually the people are inside their trailer. So it’s not like they’re sitting in a chair. They’re not Supposed to be typically, but yes, they’re Right. Right, exactly. So there’s a variety of ways that people can do it. But there was a time I got scared because I had my little border terrier. Pippin was with us. I didn’t have my puppy at the time.
And we would walk around the campground, they had many acres of trails and stuff. It was great. But there was this one guy kind of on a corner spot and it, and he pretty much lived there. I mean, you’re not supposed to live there full-time with thousand trails. You have to, I think it’s like you’re allowed to live there for nine months or something. So people would come and go and track their days. But anyway, this guy very much lived there and, and he had a shepherd that was very protective of his zone where his area was. But he was on a corner spot. And so in order to walk to the laundry room or to get around, if I wanted to do a loop of a walk,
I had to pass his sight. And his dog would come out guns a blazing. I mean, just really raw. And, and it was alarming. And it was on a, on a cable or something. And then the guy would come out and yell at him. And I mean, it was obviously not a very productive situation because the same routine happened over and over again.
And I got to the point where I would like look around the corner and see if I could see the dog. And if the dog wasn’t there sometimes then I would choose to walk that way. I didn’t wanna frustrate the guy’s dog by walking so close. I mean, it’s not nice of me either to, yeah, I feel like I was tormenting the dog, but yet I had to get from point A to point B sometimes. So sometimes I would change my routine. So it’s just hard, it’s hard to know how the other dog is feeling if it’s frustrated because it’s not getting to do the things it needs to do. In the case where your son was hurt, you know, God only knows what was going on if that dog had a history of those kinds of things. It’s not uncommon for a dog to feel protective of its space. It’s less common for a dog to feel that way about a child coming into that space. Yeah. Because kids are generally, especially because the owner’s child was with him, right? Yeah. Like he wasn’t like breaking and entering and like any of those things.
Gratitude
Right. They were all together. And it still happened. It’s So sad and scary. It was a Freak accident. I don’t blame the family when iota. Right. There’s some things I’m not allowed to say, but the mom I will be eternally grateful for. To this day, I still don’t even know what she did with her baby.
She had a four month old baby and when I saw her, she was holding the dog and the kids, the two four year olds were behind her. Yeah. And so I still don’t, I, So she really threw herself in there to save your kid, which is amazing. She Did forever in a day. Just wish all the blessing on her.
Right. You know? Absolutely. It’s terrifying though. And it’s scary ’cause she put herself at risk, but she was probably so scared and sad and devastated and felt so guilty because something like that happened. And I had my dogs with me. Like I had my dogs on their leashes, and I knew there was no way that I could get closer to like get to my kid.
Right. Without either releasing my dogs to go do whatever. And one was, we’d only had him three weeks. He was a puppy. And the other one, you know, is older. But like, there was no way for me to like save my child without causing more issues. You know, you would’ve had to sacrifice one thing to do another thing.
And luckily she was there. Yeah. And it’s good. I mean, I think that’s really great. Yeah. And then the campground was great. They took the dogs for me and they took the dogs back for me and whatnot, and they checked in on them while we were at the hospital until my mom got there. But yeah, you just never really know.
I mean, We’ve overcome a lot of our trauma. My dog, my dog, my son will still love on dogs as long as, but he’s very, like, if they start barking at him or coming towards him, he’s done. Like, he’s like, no, he goes the other way. They have to like hold the dog and make sure that it’s okay for him to really approach.
Lasting Trauma
But it’s, it was a long time coming. I mean, I remember we were at a, a dog, Park It was a small one that barely anybody used at the campground. We, the puppy was still quite a puppy then. And these two wolfhounds came, we had already met these wolfhounds at another campground. Like my son had already pet them and everything.
They’re the sweetest, gentlest, like, don’t bark. All right. But he saw them coming and he had a massive panic attack. So at that point I was like, okay, we’re done. Like, we’re not, we’re not putting anybody in this situation anymore because my puppy also was like constantly rolled by other dogs. Oh yeah. And, and like aggressively chased when we didn’t wanna be.
So we were just like, we’re we’re done with dog parks. Like we’ll figure out a different way. Right. But even here at this campground, it’s not a thousand trails. It’s a county campground we are camp hosting at, so I’m like leading activities and things like that, trying to be social. That’s our job. Yeah. And I was going around and I have a smile in my face.
There’s a bunch of people sitting outside, there’s two dogs sitting outside. And one of them was on a Leash quote unquote. And the guy said that he just escaped his hand. But the amount of reaction time between what happened and when he reacted, I, I have a feeling the dog was just kind of like sitting at his feet at first. And here I come with my little schedule being like,
When Dogs Charge at You
Hey. And all of a sudden this dog is charging me. Oh boy. Aggressively barking and growling. I jumped back and the dog still got with an inches before the owner’s wife got him. And I was just, I was shaking. I was, I just very currently said, dogs need to be leashed and restrained at all times. Here’s your paper.
And I walked away. Like, I was just very assertive and like that you need to be ha restrained. Yeah. I, and then internally, I was just thinking God. ’cause three minutes beforehand, my son was the one handing out the papers. Oh gosh. And he Had gotten hot and tired and gave up, you know? Yeah. As six year olds do.
And I was like, if that had been my kid, this would’ve been a, a very, a repeat, Difficult Situation again. Yeah, yeah. You know, and I was just like, thank God he got tired. Like, and then the very next day I was walking my dogs and I decided not to walk in the campground, but to walk along this very quiet road that’s just a few like summer cabins, they’re all private cabins, private properties. And this guy was visiting his mom and had a German shepherd and was not on a Leash. And the German shepherd started barking aggressively and charging me. And I yelled, no, I just, I stood there, I looked at him and I yelled, no. And the dog stopped and the owner said something and the dog stopped.
But then the owner yelled at me like, you just don’t know what people are thinking. Wow. Yeah. You know that if you flee you’re possibly in more danger, but you, you have to process so much information so quickly. And I think your instinct there to yell at the dog No. Was probably amazing because some dogs will stop in their tracks.
We’ve, my mentor Trish King taught us, and it sounded so funny at the time, but it actually has worked that when you’re out on a hike or out on a walk and a dog comes outta nowhere, she says to yell, go home to the dog. Yeah. And sometimes the dog literally turns around and leaves. And I’m thinking, oh my gosh,that’s just crazy to me that no, it worked. I had to do it in Kentucky. Yeah. We were at a full-time family event. So it was just like 13 families that got together and we were all boondocking on our friend’s new property that they were building into a campground. Well, it’s in the middle of nowhere. So these are like country dogs.
Right. They don’t do fences, leashes, nothing. Yeah. Yeah. And I was walking my dogs and I saw a dog probably 200, 300 feet in the distance. So I was just like, yeah, I’m not even, I turned around and I started walking away. Well, I guess they had seen us. And all of a sudden six dogs of varying sizes comes running towards us.
Oof. And I’m a dog and I know my dog can be dog aggressive, especially if he feels like he’s being, you know, attacked in some way. And so I did. I stood my ground, I yelled at the dogs, I said, go home. I just looked at them. I used my finger and you could hear me like all the men and that were around and whatnot.
They were just like, whoa, what’s going on? I was just like, no, go home. And then they started going home and I turned around and I kept walking and then I heard ’em again. So I turned around and I said, no, go home. And they did. They eventually went home. But you, you have to be assertive.
You can’t be like scared and wishy-washy ’cause they’re gonna feel that. Yeah. So, and not that you’re being mean and aggressive, you’re just being, Oh, you’re not being mean. You’re just telling ’em what you need them to do. And they’re, thank goodness that works. Yeah. ’cause that would be hard. They said that the owners were like, oh, well they’re actually really friendly dogs. They like to go to the construction workers and the construction workers give them food. Oh yeah. I’m like, yeah, I don’t care. Like I’m not having six strange dogs. Well, You can feel vulnerable in that. Yeah. You feel vulnerable in that situation. All right.
Living in an RV with Kids and a Dog – Tight Spaces
I wanna change gears a little bit and talk about what it’s like to live in a tight space, like an RV with a child and dogs. Because it’s not like you’ve got a mansion there to separate everybody into different zones. And you know, you’ve been doing this, your son was little, right? Was he toddler age when you were doing this? He Was two and a half. Almost two and a half. Okay. So how did you manage your space?
Like how much space are we dealing with? What is, can you, so we have lived in, describe to us what it looks like in there. Yeah, So we have lived in two different campers. Our first one was 26 foot long. It was a 30 year old fifth wheel. So it was one of those that you climb up into the bed area.
Okay. And that’s it. And we had, we had Duke. He is Almost 13. Okay. And then we had another dog bear who was a couple years older. He has since passed away. And he was bigger. Duke would jump up into the bed. So he would just come and sleep with us.
Bayer was too big and too old. So we, he just found a spot and it was, there were no slides in that space. It was just a hallway. Kinda like your friend’s Airstream. Right. Just a hallway. And he would always lay in front of the bathroom door, just always lay in front of the bathroom door. Okay. So when you live in a tiny space with dogs,
it’s just a lot of, Hey buddy, I need you to like scoot over like a gentle nudge with your foot kind of thing as everyone just kind of finds a spot to be. But they always find a spot to be. So right now, I, I do again, have two dogs. You can see they both have found a spot to be.
Yep. Yep. I can. How did you navigate the spaces with a toddler who was likely very interested in the dog and toddlers don’t find a spot to be the way that dogs find a spot to be. So how did you manage that? We have had lots of discussions on really looking at dog behavior. Like, oh look, that, you know, and, and you know, it too, it was a very, it was more me having to manage than him obviously. But we still discuss it because it’s a, it builds on itself right now. He can tell like, and he’ll be, oh, I’m sorry Wesley. I’m sorry Wesley. You know, like he, he is way better at it now.
So I would often have him up in the bed area. So it would just be maybe Duke up there or it was like on the couch area and the dogs would be on the floor, that kind of thing. But we’ve always had to have a lot of talks about things that we, we, you know, we don’t pull ears, we don’t pull tails, all those kinds of things. Right. Nowadays, you know, he might, my son might want them out of his room. So either he tries to say, dookie out, Wesley out. But mostly it’s me calling for them to come out, that kind of thing. And then we also, in this space, we have a much bigger space now.
We have a 30, a 36 foot long fifth wheel. And it’s a newer one. So it’s, it’s a, it got slides and it’s bigger and whatnot. So we have actually utilized a couple baby gates. We have the retractable baby gates. Yes. And a couple of the spaces. One of them, my, my lovely old man here has definitely torn off the wall.
Oh boy. His Endeavors. He is the one that would escape from our fenced in yard and move cinder blocks with his nose. So Oh goodness. He’s hard to like, contain. Contain. Yeah. He doesn’t do anything. He just wants to be in the space. Right. Or look out the window kind of thing. Yeah. My son’s room has windows.
They can see out better. And unfortunately as the camp host, we are front and center. Oh right. Yes. Everybody has to go by us. And so there’s a lot from my dogs to want to like see and bark at sometimes. Oh yeah. So we’ve had to kind of block things off. Like we’ll use their container of dog food to like block things off or that kind of thing.
Barriers inside an RV
I had a client who was really scared because she had two small dogs and a toddler and they lived in an RV and one of her dogs was actively trying to bite her toddler. And it was super scary. And she worshiped her dogs and loved them so much and was just devastated by this development because, you know, not all toddlers are as receptive.
I mean, I think that, you know, you said you had a lot of talks with your son and it’s, it worked. But I do think that some toddlers pushed those boundaries a lot as Yeah. Growing and developing. I was the, the, the impulse control at that age. Totally. Exactly. But I think that for some people, you know, they need to do more than talking obviously. And so we did, we did have her install one of those retractable gates inside of her rig. She, the way that hers was set up is there was one bedroom space that was slightly separate. And so we set up the retractable gate there to separate the living space from her bedroom space.
And then either the dog or her child would sort of take turns in that zone because it was dangerous. Like they could not be together. And so it was just so hard because you’re in a small space. It’s not like you can go down to the basement or go, you know, whatever. I mean the good news is of weather permits and you have a structure a lot of people with RVs. And I thought this was really sweet and cute actually this would not work for your escape artist dog. But for some dogs who are less motivated to leave is a lot of the RVs would have, you know, X pens or portable, you know, panels or whatever. And they would set up this beautiful thing around their trailer so that they could open the door and the dog could go outside and lay in the sun or in the dirt as the case in central Oregon.
Oh, dirt everywhere. It’s amazing. Dirt, sand. Yes. All the sand. Yeah, exactly. All of it. Oh so dirty. But you, you know, you put big mats out and you put the panels out and, and the dog can be outside. But you know, again, not all seasons are gonna be like that.
And not everybody who lives in a trailer can move the trailer. Right. Some people literally it’s drivable. Some people you have to tow it and it’s hard. I don’t like towing it. I kind of, you know, my husband is better at it and I, it scares me when it’s windy and you know, I just, it’s not my jam, but it can be difficult. Right. And so when you’re somewhere and it’s freezing and there’s not a lot of options, it’s not like you’re gonna put your whip it out in the winter. I mean, come on. No, you’re just not gonna do that. They need to be in their cozy cave bed inside by, you know, by the heat vent.
So anyway, it was really hard for her and, and we really just had to work very hard on these zones and getting everyone comfortable in those zones, which takes time. It’s not an immediate, for some dogs you can stick up a baby gate and all is fine in the world at that moment. They’re like, thank God you gave me relief from the annoying toddler and I am grateful for that and so I’m gonna be happy on my side.
Frustration over Space and Separation
But then you’re dealing with the toddler who’s maybe trying to climb over it and still get to the dog. But some dogs have separation issues. They have trouble being on the other side of a barrier. They’re feeling like they’re frustrated because you’re away from them. And so, I mean, the good news about living in a trailer is that even if you’re on the other side of the barrier, you’re not that far away. And they can probably still see you. Yes. Or at least hear you. Which for some dogs is frustrating ’cause they hear you and see you, but they can’t be with you. But regardless, it, it, I don’t want people to hear that idea of like, oh, put up a baby gate and that’s all there is to it.
That can be the case for some families, but it’s not the case for all of them. Yeah. And so I just wanna give empathy if, if that’s hard for your dog, it can be really hard for puppies too. Especially because puppies naturally want to be connected to their litter mates, their mom, you, whoever, you know. And so that can be skill that takes time and patience and you know, obviously I can help through that if, if that happens to be the case. But it is a challenge sometimes living in a tiny space, isn’t it? It’s ’cause you have your husband, you and your son and the two dogs and We’re not small people.
We actually got a puppy while living in an RV because our old dog had passed. And we’re just like, okay, maybe it’s time, but crate training is not a thing that we could ever even think to put in here for, for a dog that size for a small dog, sure. But not for a dog our size. We have a, a medium, medium-sized bernedoodle. Yeah. There’s just no way that we could fit a, I don’t even know, we could barely fit our people. Right. Like we can’t fit a big old cage. And so dealing having that as well as he’s a resource guarder.
Oh boy. And Yeah, it’s, it’s something that we’ve been working on a lot. It will, I don’t think it will ever be great, but like we have to have different areas of the camper to feed our dogs. Yeah. And then we have to like really work with him on, hey, you know, the bed is not yours.
You can only be on the bed when we say Yeah. Which is really hard in a tiny space. Like most people who train dogs don’t understand that. It’s not like I can just, I don’t have a door to close. Yeah. Literally the only doors I have are the one to go outside and the one to go in the bathroom. Yep. The toilet.
Separating Dogs from Puppies
When you have a puppy and another dog, you have to have management between the two of them just like you would between a toddler and a dog. Because puppies are annoying. And I say this as a person who is a puppy fanatic, I love puppies, but they are annoying. And I’m not gonna ignore the fact that a puppy that has full access to another dog is probably gonna get hurt at some point because the other dog is gonna be like, dude, back off and they will correct the puppy.
Yeah. And luckily for me, Pippin is super appropriate when he corrects Olive my puppy, she’s now eight months old. But she can be a total menace and he does correct her, but he doesn’t do it inappropriately. Yeah. So she does listen after a little bit. But some dogs would overcorrect and could, could hurt her. And so I just sometimes need to use management to keep them apart so that he is protected.
Because feeling safe is emotional and physical. I mean, you got to that when you talked to me about the scary story with the dog rushing at you. Yeah. You did not feel physically safe and you also had past trauma so you did not feel emotionally safe. Right. And the same thing is true with, you know, with our dogs. I want them physically safe.
I don’t want the puppy to get hurt and I don’t want my older dog to be a, a pin cushion for puppy teeth. Right. But I also want them feeling like, mom’s got you, I’ve, I’ve got you. I’m gonna keep you safe. They’re annoying and I’m gonna give you space because you deserve rest and peace and quiet the way that the rest of us deserve that.
Right. So when you bring a puppy into a small space, you’re then managing a child, an adult dog, and a puppy. And I think that’s where those retractable gates are invaluable because you have no spaces. But if you, if you live in a long tube, you know, like my friend and her airstream, that’s like a tube. Literally.
It’s, you know, or another kind of a trailer that is just sort of long. ’cause that’s tend to be how they are that you can divide up that hallway with those retractable gates. And some of my clients now, you know, I, I work with people to get their dogs ready before new babies are born. And we often set up a series of gates, whatever kind you want, but to just have different zones of the house so that you just don’t have to think about it when you’re sleep deprived. And hallways are great. We have a lot of families that live in open floor playing houses, which is the opposite of a trailer. And there are no, there are no hallways. So in those cases then we use pens or we, we literally open up a huge pen and divide a room in half or whatever. There’s a million different ways. And so when people so sometimes come to me with an objection and say, oh well I can’t divide my space because X, Y, and Z. I’m like, “oh no, I’ve got you. I’ve got solutions for all these types of spaces. We’ve got RVs covered, we’ve got open floor plans covered, we’ve got, you know, hallways covered.” Just because thank goodness manufacturers of these products are, are insightful or they’ve heard from enough potential clients of like, this is what we need and there’s tons of options and regardless of your spatial constraints and so you’re really living in that right now.
What is a Camp Host – and how it’s overstimulating for some dogs
And then to add to that, I wanna reiterate something that you said. The camp host, for those of you that aren’t familiar with this, the camp host is a person who lives generally in an RV at the front of the campground. Or when people come in, you greet them, you make them feel welcome. You’re also responsible for sort of keeping the peace and making sure that people don’t leave too much trash out.
And you want it to look nice and you often have to clean the bathrooms. And it’s a thankless job for the people who have to do that, by the way. So thank you. I, I appreciate that. ’cause that’s where we shower usually. ’cause we don’t want to fill up our whole water tank with shower water. But anyway, you’re in a spot where there’s high visibility, which means that if you have a dog that is easily overstimulated by passing dogs, passing children, bicycles Hmm. Cars, dust, whatever, whoof, man that’s a lot. And then you have to think about, okay, well do I need to block off the windows? Do I put window cling film up so my dog can we, it lets lighten but they can’t see out because my poor dog is so stressed with all this input.
Yeah, right. The sensory input. So you’re kind of in, in a vulnerable spot really. Yeah. And we’ve had to do, we, we haven’t, I renovated my son’s room this summer and so I was finally able to put a curtain up over the one window, but they still like sometimes move it. But it has helped. I would say that there are probably some dogs that are not equipped for that type of lifestyle too.
Separation Anxiety and Sound Sensitivity
Yeah. That, you know, it’s hard because we may want that lifestyle be on the road, go around and some dogs may just be too sensitive for it or maybe too scared or you know, too fearful or whatever. We had an incident with Pippin one time we were in Washington and it was really interesting. Pippin has some separation anxiety. So being in a trailer is great because he’s with us all the time.
But what can happen with dogs that have sound sensitive or that have separation anxiety is that they can also have sound sensitivity. The two of those things often go hand in hand. And there, there were some tree trimmers in the place where we were and for some reason that really freaked him out and he had this full-blown panic attack and he tucked his tail and wanted to run and bolt and there was nowhere I could really go to escape from that kind of input.
Yeah. And so my husband had to drive the truck over and pick us up so I could get him into the truck. And then I had to drive, we had to go out of the campground for a while so that he could decompress because it wasn’t, it wasn’t working out for him. Yeah. And then we were gone for a while and he could shake it off and you know,
I’m working with a veterinary behaviorist on this and we’re trying to see what we can do to help him be more comfortable. Luckily, you know, by the time we got back that sensory input was gone and he luckily didn’t have a negative association with the space and so he was able to happily come back in the trailer and walk around and, and be okay.
But it was so sad for me to see him have such a reaction and it made me think like, you know, if he were gonna react like that every time we went somewhere, then I don’t think I could continue to do that. Or I would continue to do it and have to leave him somewhere else. Yeah. Or have somebody, I’ve had friends that have had to make that really hard decision themselves and it’s not an easy one.
I mean we’ve also with Wesley, the, the, he’s not, he’s two now, but we’ve, we have to weigh that conversation sometimes too. Like, is this, is this okay for him? Is it not? You know, it seems to come and go. So it’s really hard to make that kind of decision, but it’s not a,
it’s not one that people make lightly. Right. And sometimes it is for the best dog, you know, for the dog to, to be rehomed in those situations. Luckily for the most part, Wesley’s. Okay. Especially with the, and you know, we also have been working with a behaviorist or have worked with a behaviorist and so there are things that we’re doing to help manage that and help him with that reactivity.
He’s definitely better than he was. Right. But You just, you don’t know. We leave our, luckily, luckily unluckily the AC units and RVs are extraordinarily loud. Yes. And so we always leave the fan running. So we always have it on whenever we leave the house. Yes. So that it’s like a white noise that kind of, it doesn’t completely diminish.
I mean dogs have great sense of hearing and whatnot. Right. But it does help kind of mitigate it and then sometimes we’ll even leave the TV on. Yeah. I also have found that they do, they do well together. I don’t know ’cause we did have a period of time where our one dog was by himself and he definitely did better once we had another dog with him.
Even if he was annoyed by him sometimes. Like Yeah, they do. They, it’s almost like they calm each other down. For Sure. That’s good for your dogs. It’s funny because my Pippin, he who has separation issues, if he starts howling, he will sometimes trigger the puppy to start howling. Oh. And if she’s by herself, she never does it.
Dogs Barking in the Campground
So it’s interesting ’cause I think that sometimes they can calm each other and sometimes they can rile each other up. Right. We So that if they hear us outside without them, they’re barking. Yeah. And so we’ve had to do these experiments because you don’t wanna be the person on the campground where your dog’s barking all day long while you’re gone. Oh yeah.
Of course not. Yes. And then, so like we’ll do these experiments where we’ll go and then we’ll sneak back after a few minutes to see what’s going on. And typically after five minutes they’re, they’re done. Yeah. Right. That’s good. It’s very, very rare that they would continue to bark after that. Yeah, That’s good. Especially ’cause in most campgrounds in this campground,
I walk them together because it’s typically pretty quiet. But our campground in Florida, I cannot walk them together. They get too reactive. There’s too many other dogs, too many other animals. But it’s just safest for me to walk them by themselves. And they don’t like that. Yeah. They don’t like me going with the other dog without them. Yeah.
And so they will bark for a few minutes, but again, by the time I come back they’re typically not barking. Yeah. I wanna ask you a question and then we’ll, we’ll wrap up. But the, the last thing I wanna ask you is if you have any advice for other parents, mostly moms listen. But hey dads, if you’re out there for parents about how to manage their kids and dogs,
if you are living or just traveling summer travel or whatever, if you wanna give it a go and rent a camper, a caravan or whatever and you wanna try it out, what advice would you give in terms of etiquette, in terms of children, dogs? Are there any things to look out for? You know, what would you set somebody up with for some advice?
Managing Kids and Dogs during RV travel
So I, I, I’m sure I know I’ve already alluded to it, but just to be frank about it. For one is to be your child’s impulse control. Your child does not have a fully functioning prefrontal cortex. They do not have the impulse control that you do and they won’t until about 25. So that’s why your car insurance goes down at age 25. So you need to be your child’s impulse control. I actually, I didn’t know them, they weren’t like a friend friend beforehand, but I helped them through the situation. They’re not even traveling. They are stationary. And they had a nine-year-old little, little boy who was walking a friend home and quote unquote friend told them to go pet the dog that was in the yard and the, the dog mauled, oh, not as bad as my son, but really like almost lost an eye. And it’s just one of those things where like this is a continuous discussion and we are continuously being the impulse control. I never tell my son, oh just go pet the dog. He’s fine. It’s a, you know, I always ask him, how are you, do you want to pet the dog? What do you need them to do to feel safe in order to pet that dog? Because I never a wanna dismiss his feelings. His feelings are completely valid. Even before the traumatic event, his feelings would be completely valid.
Traumatic Parenting
I mean, I remember I was seven and my uncle’s dachshund bit, both of my knees. And as I was screaming, ’cause you know I’m in pain, my father covered my mouth because he thought I was just scared of the German shepherd in the background. He didn’t know it was happening. He just assumed I was being a ridiculous kid scared of a German shepherd. Which I don’t know why ’cause we used to own one.
Oh My gosh. And he just covered my mouth until he realized that I had blood literally dripping down my legs and the dog was hanging from one of my knees. So like we can’t, and and that one’s an obvious one, right? But we’re not, there’s not always obvious why our kids might not want to, they just have an internal instinct.
We should trust that we can help them, we can navigate that with them, but never force them. And by teaching them like, Hey, does this feel safe to you or not? That will go a long way to when they are nine walking by themselves and can mitigate that. But always, always, you are their impulse control. You have to make sure that they’re not stepping and rolling all over the, you know, their bodies and whatnot. We still, he’s six has had this experience, knows our dog’s cues and we still have to have the talks and I have to help move his body sometimes. Right. So that he’s not accidentally kicking the dog’s face, you Know? No, that’s good. And I would just add to what you’re saying, that the same is true of the dog that we have to read the dog translate for our child what the dog is saying with their body and the dog has to wanna say hi to.
Consent with kids and dogs
Right. It has to go both ways. Yes, exactly. This is a great opportunity to talk about consent, right. That this is very much a this, this is all around. The dog has to really want an interaction with you and you have to really want an interaction with them. And it has to be consensual on both sides of this.
Yes. Right. So Enthusiastically consensual. Yeah. And if a dog is just like neutral, then I would just skip it and say, you know what? They don’t want to say hi. And in fact, last night I brought Pippen with me to a food truck. I met my kids for dinner and Pippen was with us and there were two little boys running around wrestling.
Their dad was working in one of the food trucks and they were bored and one ran over towards Pippin and said Dog. And he started to reach over Pippin’s head and I put my body in between them and I said, he doesn’t want you to pet him. And he said, I want to pet him. And I said, I’m sorry he doesn’t want you to pet him.
Please don’t do that. And the boy looked at me with surprise because most people just are eager their dog to have their dog have this interaction. And I was not eager for that. My dog actually was not pulling away or anything else. He was actually kind of curious about the boy, which I loved, but I still, I didn’t want some wild, like he was really, they were running around screaming, wrestling and it, they were, they were over aroused. And I, and I didn’t know if he would be gentle or if he would be one of those Pat Petters where they reach over and go pat, pat, pat on top of the dog’s head or whatever. That’s the last thing my dog would want.
So regardless of my dog’s interest, I didn’t know this boy. His parent was working, literally making food in a food truck, wasn’t watching the child. And so I had to be the advocate for both of them. Yeah. And so I do, I do think that, you know, it’s just important to remember the whole consent situation. Alright, well I’m gonna wrap this up. I just wanna thank you again for taking the time to talk to us about living on the road with kids and dogs, tight spaces, safety around random people’s dogs because some people come and go. It’s not that you always get to develop a huge relationship with these people, so you have to be extra careful about some of that stuff.
