Take Paws The official pet travel blog of GoPetFriendly.com

It’s Kind Of Like Being A Turtle

Last week I was in New York and got to meet some of the other bloggers who are participating in the Zyrtec Parks Unleashed promotion. We introduced ourselves and talked a bit about our blogs while we waited for our turn to interview the spokesperson of the campaign, Queen Latifah. (Come back on Friday for more on that!)

My ten-second elevator speech goes something like this: “My husband and I run a pet travel website and write a blog about our adventures as we criss-cross around the country in an RV with our two dogs, Ty and Buster.”

You can see the wheels spinning as this sound bite is processed and sooner or later I get THE QUESTION … What’s it like traveling in a small RV with your spouse – and your two dogs – all the time?
Honestly, I absolutely love it – it’s kind of like being a turtle. Your house is your car, and your car is your house. We have everything we need in the Winnebago. We’re self-contained. We’re nimble. We’re free.

I imagine, though, what people are really thinking when they ask THE QUESTION is more like: How do you all stand each other? What happens when you fight? Do you hide the knives – because there’s no where to run? So, if that’s what you were thinking, here are the answers:

It’s really pretty easy really. We’ve gotten accustomed to living in a much smaller space. We tend to move around one at a time so we’re not stepping on each other or the dogs. And, we spend a lot of time outside, because life in the Winnebago is easier when the dogs are tired.

We rarely argue. Though, this is something we’ve had to work on, because removing the routine from your life can make things harder.

A routine is like a short cut for discussing every minute detail of your daily activities. When there is no routine you can’t just assume that your partner will do the laundry because they always do. There are a lot more decisions to make – so many that it can be overwhelming. What should we do today? Where should we go next? What route should we take to get there? Should we eat out or make dinner? Where should we eat / what should we make?

We have two rules that help us with all this decision-making: First, no one is allowed to say “I don’t care.” It’s an unfair way to shift the responsibility to the other person, and it’s rarely true – we all care to some degree. The second is that when we state our preference, we rate how strongly we feel about it on a scale from 1 to 5. So, for example, if I say “I’d like to make chili for dinner and I’m a 2 on that” and Rod says, “I want pizza and I’m a 4,” we’re likely going for pizza, because Rod felt strongly and I was just north of indifferent.

And, to answer the last part of the question, the knives have only ever been removed from the drawer during the course of food preparation … so far.

Don’t forget – tomorrow is the last day to enter to win a $50 Amazon.com gift card and another chance at the Samsung Galaxy Tablet computer in this week’s Zyrtec Parks Unleashed Giveaway.

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