Ride or Die
I travel by car quite a bit, and because most of my traveling is related to making nature and landscape photographs, backpacking, hiking and more or less living out of my car and camping on public lands and wilderness areas for several days at a time, my dog comes with me almost always (unless a particular situation renders it just not feasible or ethical, of course). With the addition of Hazel to the pack, I now plan to travel with two dogs, so it's important for me to introduce her to riding and travel etiquette early, and for Japhy and me to learn a new two-dog routine for everything as well.
When I adopted Japhy, he was six months old and obviously hadn't been on many non-stressful car rides. The first several long trips we took made him sick. Fortunately, that seems to be a thing of the past now, and he is absolutely in love with The Ride. In fact, I've never seen a dog get so utterly enthusiastic to jump in the back seat and wait for the windows to come down (he's super goofy about it). But so far Hazel's only car rides have been from the house to the vet clinic to get her puppy shots, and on each of these occasions she has ridden on the front seat, without Japhy. I'd waited to introduce her to back seat riding with Japhy until she got a little bigger, because I didn't want Japhy to smash her into the seat in his excitement. Well, she's bigger now. And she's been part of the pack for a little over a month, which means that Japhy is also much calmer about Hazel's "firsts" with us.
This morning's sunrise looked to be a pretty good one. That's what instigated this. The last time I decided to jump in the car and drive out to photograph the sunrise, Hazel was still quite small, so Japhy and I went out without her. But with Hazel's first camping trip coming up next week, it was time to get her in the car with Japhy and see how they'd do together. Japhy jumped up in the back seat first and I picked up Hazel and put her on the seat next to him. To my surprise, Japhy wasn't overstimulated by her presence in the back seat space. He just walked over to the opposite side of the seat and waited for the window to come down. Good! Hazel, on the other hand, seemed a bit anxious. I kept talking to her in a calm voice to reassure her, but Japhy's presence is what I think was most calming for her. And Japhy seemed to want to reassure her as well, as later in the drive I looked in my rearview mirror and saw him checking on her. Very sweet.
As a special bonus, Hazel waited until we were back home and in the yard to potty. Good girl, Hazel. :)
I missed photographing the sunrise, but getting the pups introduced to back seat riding together was worth it. Here are some photos I managed to make (while stopped) on our very first ride together.
I didn't have the right lens for photographing subjects that were so close to me. I went out to photograph the sunrise and came back with some fuzzy photos of dogs. Such is my life. ;-)
