Don't forget the dogs

I think its time in this story for me to introduce you to our two furry friends, Tess and Rolo.

Both were rescue dogs and both are real Heinz 57 types with perhaps an unspecified terrier gene being the only common thing between them.

Meet Tess (left) and Rolo

 We took in Tess as a puppy and she is now 15 years old. She has an adorable temperament at home but her dedication to the sport of chasing rabbits and squirrels has meant that we have spent many hours stood around in woods waiting for her to come back from her latest foray. She was always super fit with a whippet like body and for years we kept hoping that one day she would “settle down”. We were right, but she was 14 before arthritis set in and it was only then that she finally decided it was easier to walk at our pace.

Rolo came to us as chubby little 10 month old whose lack of house training became evident in his first few weeks with us. He had neither inclination nor energy to chase furry woodland creatures and he happily waddled along beside us. With regular walks, his tubby bum soon disappeared and whilst he showed no interest in hunting with Tess, he started to demonstrate two obsessions that plague us to this day – a hatred of anything in a fluorescent jacket (postmen, road workers, refuse collectors all included) and an obsession with other dogs which includes the desire to be very angry indeed with anything big enough to eat him as a snack!

These two characters were joining us on our French adventure and so in plenty of time we set about getting them their EU Pet Passports as part of the Pet Travel Scheme (PETS) which provides for qualifying domestic pets to travel to and from the UK without undergoing quarantine. The first step was getting them vaccinated against Rabies and having blood tests done to confirm that all was OK. They were already micro chipped and up to date with their other normal vaccinations so in due course our vet was able to issue their passports.

Whilst both Tess and Rolo were good travellers in the car, the furthest they had ever gone was about three hours so this was going to be beyond their (or our) experience so needed some thought and planning. One option was to arrange for them to be taken over by a specialised animal transport company but we didn’t like the idea of handing them over to complete strangers (particularly if they might be wearing fluorescent jackets!).

Having concluded that they would travel in the car with us, whilst they normally sat loose in the rear of our estate car we did decide that it would be safer for them (and for us) to have them enclosed within a travel cage. This was a small investment but undoubtedly gave us great peace of mind that they were secure in the car and also appeared to help them to settle very well on the journey.

Testing out the Travel Cage

We also decided at this point to utilise the services of Eurotunnel as it would mean that we could stay with them in the car throughout the crossing rather than having to abandon them on the car deck of a ferry. Eurotunnel have clearly recognised the market opportunity and promote their pet friendly services on their website. With secure exercise areas at either end of the tunnel and complementary poop bags, its great to see they have thought about the needs of the travelling pet.

Except of course they are not providing services for pets out of the goodness of their hearts. For each dog it is an extra £15 per trip. That’s an awful lot of money for a complementary poop bag. The irony is that we could have loaded up the car with 27 small children and it wouldn’t have cost us a penny extra to travel through the tunnel even though they provided complementary baby changing facilities. But for two dogs and a complementary poop bag – that will be £30 extra please!!

That said, the staff at Eurotunnel were extremely courteous and friendly and the train supervisor even came to say hello to Tess and Rolo as we travelled beneath the waves. Just a shame he was wearing a fluorescent jacket…

The journey down to Busserolles was incident free and we were able to stop regularly to exercise the dogs in the superbly maintained rest areas that crop up regularly along the length of the French motorway network. We made one overnight stop in the Campanile hotel at Chateauxroux (pet friendly with a charge of just €5 per dog) and arrived fit and fresh to collect the keys from Piegut Immobiler on Monday, 4^th June 2012.