What a pleasure it was to open a recent e-mail message and see a jubilant report from reader Wanda about spending four months in Europe with her pup! Here’s The Fuzzy One, a seven year-old, 13 lb. Shih Tzu, on a Trenitalia train to Venice:

Waiting to get underway at the Turin train station

Officially, per the Trenitalia website, your pet dog must travel in a 70x30x50 cm container, but heck, it’s Italy — I suspect that by this point in their trip, Wanda and TFO had learned that there’s often a big difference between official requirements and what happens in real life.

Here are Wanda and TFO together, shopping sensibly (“sotto costo”) in some location where Italian is spoken:

Wanda wrote to me from Switzerland, but they’ve covered some ground — here are her quick impressions from the places they’ve visited so far:

“In Europe we rarely had trouble getting our little one on public transport or in restaurants; sometime grocery stores would stop us (as an American that was totally understandable). Spain was the most challenging and least welcoming of her, Italy was better, but oh the French, they love dogs.”

Wanda had suspected that TFO would be a good traveler (“Your blog and The Fuzzy One’s personality gave us the confidence that we could take this 4-month trip”), and, happily, she was right: “She is amazing. 99% of everyone she meets are charmed by her quiet demeanor and tiny cuteness. When they learn she has traveled all the way from Colorado they are amazed.”

Safe travels and an easy return home, Wanda and TFO! Thank you so much for the pictures and the report, and thank you, too, for the inspiration of your example — not only for undertaking a big trip together but also for consciously choosing to be good ambassadors for pet travel (“We are super-conscientious pet owners, never wanting to be the ones that make traveling with a pet more difficult than it already is”).