Happy news for Florida pet owners! Pet Airways has just announced that they’re adding Ft. Lauderdale to their roster of cities (see Dog Jaunt’s earlier post for an overview of the airline and the other airports it serves). The airline will use the Ft. Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), not Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International (FLL). As of today, fares between New York and Ft. Lauderdale are $249 (and up) each way.
Let’s start with Pet CV, since I’ve owned it longer. It’s an iPhone application that allows you to input certain health information about your pets, and tracks upcoming vaccinations, flea treatments, etc. It also allows you to e-mail some of that information to someone else. I bought the app because I like the idea of having an overview of Chloe’s medical history close at hand. Although it isn’t a substitute for a health certificate or a shot record on your vet’s letterhead, it would potentially be helpful in a medical emergency, or when communicating with a kennel or petsitter.
Pet CV’s scope is too limited to be really useful, but what it does, it does pretty well. Here’s what I like: It works. You can enter your vet’s or breeder’s name, and the app imports all of the information you have about those names in your contacts list (and now you can dial your vet from Pet CV directly, without exiting and going into your contacts). Once you figure out the app’s trickinesses (see below), you can enter all of your pet’s treatments, and the app will keep track of when the next treatment is due. Here’s what I don’t like: To add a non-standard treatment to the existing list, you need to click on the “Edit” button in the upper right corner (which is, it turns out, not intuitive). A previous version of the app did not back up to your computer, so I have now entered Chloe’s medical history twice. And the app, as a whole, captures only a small part of what I would want to e-mail to a petsitter or kennel.
Pet Dossier’s scope is broader, which I like. You can collect in one place the medical history info that Pet CV focuses on, plus current medications, dietary supplements, allergies, injury history, and exercise preferences. Separate categories collect info about your dog’s food and treat preferences, habits, and toys. There is some flexibility built in (you can add miscellaneous information to “notes,” for example, and you can add a new field to the health section), but there are places where more flexibility would be welcome (under “Food,” for example, it would be nice to be able to list your dog’s preferred flavors).
I’m having real trouble using Pet Dossier, however. When I try to enter info directly into the “Contacts” section, the app balks. When I try to “copy from iPhone Contacts,” it pulls up an odd subset of my contacts list (which don’t include any of Chloe’s service providers). One of the contacts was me, so I added myself as one of Chloe’s “parents” — and the app collected all of my phone numbers, but called them all “mobile” numbers. Arghhh!
So there are your choices: Pet CV, which works, but is limited in scope and darned expensive, or Pet Dossier, which is potentially more useful and costs less, but doesn’t actually work. There are a couple of competing products out there, including MiPets and iPet Diary and Log — at some point, I’ll take the plunge and try them, and I’ll let you know what I think.
In an earlier post, I reviewed PetMD Finder, an iPhone application that lists the nearest veterinarians, daycare centers, dog parks, dog sitters, dog walkers, groomers, and pet-friendly hotels (or you can provide a zip code for the location you’re interested in). Pretty ambitious, I thought, but that was before I dug into petcentric places, a Purina iPhone app which tells you about all that plus animal shelters, dog-friendly beaches, amusement parks and campgrounds, and dog-oriented events.
Now that’s ambitious. As yet, the app hasn’t grown into its paws — its listings are incomplete, and it’s a bit clunky to navigate — but it has promise. And, heck, it’s free.
Here are some of the features I like. Dog parks are listed in order of geographical closeness, the opportunity is offered for users to post reviews (and some are), and the list of pet stores includes more than just the superstores (the hotel list, however, is pretty basic).
Features I wish it had? It’s nice to be given a map of a location, but take the next step and allow me to get written driving directions to it. I’d like to have the zip code of the location I’m interested in survive from one search to the next, so that once I’ve found out about dog-friendly hotels in the 43050 zip code, I don’t have to type the zip code in again to find out about pet services, dog parks, etc. I’d also like to see a category for dog-friendly restaurants.
Things I don’t much care about? The fluff behind the “Pet Info” and “Gallery” buttons, including info about Purina products, pictures of a bunch of dogs and cats, and “pet tips and facts.”
The Maryland Transit Administration (or “MTA Maryland”) operates local bus, commuter bus, subway, light rail and commuter rail systems in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. A customer service representative told me that on all forms of transportation, small dogs in carriers are allowed on board, for no additional fee.
I am updating this post as of today’s date, 5/16/16, since there’s too much more info to give you than a parenthetical can hold. The MTA’s website now includes parts of its pet policy. On the commuter buses, “Only small pets, confined in closed containers, are permitted on MTA Commuter Bus coaches. The container must be carried by the owner and not placed on a seat or in the aisle.” They are also explicitly allowed on MARC trains: “Only small pets, confined in closed carriers, are permitted on MARC trains.” That leaves the other pieces of the MTA puzzle uncovered, and a reader asked me to confirm that small pets in carriers are allowed on regular buses.
I called the MTA again today, and the customer service rep confirmed that small pets fully contained in carriers are still allowed on board all forms of MTA transit, including regular buses and the metro subway. The carrier must fit in your lap, and must not take up a seat.
As you know from earlier posts, pet dogs are not allowed on Amtrak [please note that since I first wrote this post, the door has creaked open a bit on traveling via Amtrak with a pet] or the major intercity buses, and I’m always looking for alternative ways to travel with a small dog. I briefly thought that MTA Maryland might provide the missing link between WMATA (Washington D.C.’s transit system) and SEPTA (Philadelphia’s transit system), allowing you to take your small dog from Washington D.C. to New York City by four transit systems (WMATA, MTA Maryland, SEPTA, and NJ Transit). However, the farthest east that MTA Maryland’s MARC trains go is Perryville, MD, some 35 miles short of Newark, DE, the last stop on the relevant SEPTA train. There has been talk of extending the MARC train system to connect with SEPTA, so the scheme may work someday.
For other posts about traveling with dogs on public transit, take a look at Dog Jaunt’s handy guide!
We clicker train Chloe, and it’s going well, but the sheer noise of our standard box clicker hadn’t struck me until a recent houseguest quailed at the beginning of a training session. They don’t last long — usually only a few minutes at a time — but our guest’s reaction made me think twice about traveling with a clicker.
So I ordered an i-Click clicker, which is supposed to be quieter and easier to use, and I’m here to report that it is slightly easier to use — the button protrudes, so there’s no confusion over which end of the silver strip to press, and you can click it by smacking it against your leg, or stepping on it with your foot, if you wish. It’s also a good deal quieter — so quiet, in fact, that when we brought it to a class it was completely drowned out by our colleagues’ box clickers. It’s still a clicker, so I’d time your use of it to hours when your hotel neighbors are likely to be awake (and, preferably, out of their room), but it’s an improvement.
Photo by Les Chatfield
If you’re looking for a dog-friendly pub in England, Scotland or Wales, I have a couple of resources for you. The first site, Doggie Pubs, is no-frills in both presentation and requirements: A pub’s food and drink have to be good, and your well-behaved dog has to be welcome to sit by you while you eat (it’s just not good enough if you can only have a beer with your dog).
Winalot (a Purina brand) worked with Doggie Pubs to create Winalot’s interactive map of dog-friendly pubs in the British Isles. It’s more glamorous and user-friendly than the Doggie Pubs site, but presumably contains similar information. (Please note that Winalot’s site also offers an interactive map of dog-friendly British hotels.)
If you prefer to flip through the pages of a guidebook, check out the Good Guide to Dog Friendly Pubs, Hotels and B&Bs (the current edition appears to be available only from amazon.co.uk). Brought to you by the same people that publish the popular Good Pub Guide, it has mixed reviews, with the main complaint being that it’s not comprehensive.
Petside.com just published a list of the top ten off-leash dog parks in the U.S. The only information I have about their survey is their statement that “Petside looked at the size of the dog park, amenities and activities offered, hours of operation and the cost of entry,” but I point you to the list as a resource.
Petside.com is affiliated with Proctor & Gamble, a Cincinnati-based company, so maybe that’s why so many of their top 10 parks are in the eastern half of the country — the only West Coast dog park that made the cut is the Point Isabel Dog Park in Richmond, CA. The other entries are located in Fort Lauderdale, Princeton, New York City, Ossining, Norfolk (VA), Ada (MI), Fort Worth, Edinboro (PA), and Jacksonville.
Photo by chelmsfordblue
There are few things nicer in life than going punting with a sweetheart or a small group of friends. You’re on the water among ducks and swans, someone’s brought a picnic, and since you’re all beginners, there will be lots of laughter. You’re also surrounded by glorious views, and a happy sense that generations of university folk have done exactly the same thing, with the same enjoyment. (In the high season, the rivers get crowded — too crowded, sometimes, for real happiness — but the fall is a delight.)
I’ve only been punting at Cambridge, but no doubt it’s just as much of a hoot at Oxford. If you are affiliated with the university, you can get a very good deal indeed on punt rentals, and some of the colleges offer punts to the public at good rates (e.g., Cambridge’s Trinity College). In both towns, however, there are a handful of big companies that will rent you punts — the price is higher, but they have more boats to offer and they take credit cards. All of the companies I contacted will allow you to bring your small dog on board with you.
One suggestion: Along with the picnic and blankets you bring with you, be sure to pick up life jackets for yourselves, and bring one for for your dog. The rivers are shallow, but they’re, you know, rivers, and in places they have mucky bottoms and tricky currents.
The River Cam is divided, for boating purposes, into the Lower River (generally reserved for rowers), the Middle River (the College Backs) and the Top River (heading southwest, or upstream, to Grantchester — where you can get lunch or tea, classically at The Orchard).
Scudamores Punting Co. will rent you punts for the middle and upper parts of the river. They allow dogs on self-hire punts and on their private chauffeured tours, but not on their public tours. Granta Boat & Punt Co. also offers self-hire punts and chauffeured tours of the middle and upper river, and they too allow small dogs on board. Scudamores has a couple of locations, but if you leave from their Mill Lane location you can wait until the last minute to choose whether you want to punt on the middle or upper river. Granta is located slightly upstream from Scudamores’ Mill Lane boatyard.
At Oxford, you have a couple of good choices. You can punt on the Cherwell, which heads south to meet the Thames (called the Isis here) just southeast of Folly Bridge. Hire punts at the Cherwell Boathouse, and head upstream to lunch at the Victoria Arms pub, or downstream past University Parks. Dogs of all sizes are allowed on the self-hire punts. Alternatively, you can hire punts at Magdalen Bridge Boathouse, located at (surprise!) Magdalen Bridge. Magdalen Bridge Boathouse also allows small dogs on board.
Alternatively, you can punt on the Isis, on the west side of town. A popular route takes you upstream past Port Meadow to the Trout pub. Salters Steamers‘ punt hire stand is located at the Head of the River pub, at Folly Bridge. Small dogs are allowed on Salters Steamers’ self-hire punts, and they are also allowed on the punts rented by Oxford River Cruises, located upstream from Salters Steamers at the Perch Inn. The inn is very near Port Meadow, so if you rent a punt from Oxford River Cruises you’ll have a shorter trip to the Trout.
The Volunteer Park Café is a gem — a corner café just two blocks east of Volunteer Park in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, with fantastic baked goods from co-owner Heather and fantastic everything else from co-owner Ericka. They serve breakfast and lunch every day except Monday, and dinner every day except Sunday and Monday. It’s comfortable, casual, and friendly, and the sidewalk tables and steps in front of the café are always cluttered with dogs. There are bowls of water, and sometimes Heather makes peanut butter-and-bacon dog treats (kept in a glass jar behind the counter).
It’s only flaw is that it’s too well-loved — get there early on weekend mornings, especially, or you’ll be in a long line, gazing yearningly at the baked goods in the display cases leading to the register.
Volunteer Park Café
1501 17th Avenue E.
Seattle, WA 98112
T: 206-328-3155
This is my first annual birthday post, featuring something goofy from the world of pet travel
Say what you will about American Girl dolls and products, but you have to admit that the company’s attention to detail is amazing. Case in point: Your Just Like You doll’s pet (choose among puppies Coconut, Sugar and Honey, or cat Ginger) can be carried in a pink and white pet carrier complete with mesh ventilation panels on the short ends (each with a privacy panel), an ID tag, a faux sheepskin pad, and a collapsible water bowl. It has a shoulder strap, and in fact, if you didn’t know that Ginger (pictured) is only 5.5″ tall, you’d think that this was a full-sized carrier.
