Paws, Claws & Life on the Road: Traveling Full-Time with Pets in Your RV

Paws Claws & Life on the Road is Sponsored by RV Roofing Solutions

Nomad life doesn’t have to mean leaving your pets behind. Jennifer and Tasha are joined by four special guests — Ashley and Steve from Campfires & Motors, Teal from Towed You So, and a very secret surprise guest host — for a laugh-filled, real-talk conversation about what it actually takes to travel full-time with your animals. From reactive dogs and emergency vet visits to ferret math and speedy animals with built-in racing stripes, this one’s for every RVer who refuses to leave their furry, spikey, or slimey family member behind.

Learn How:

•        To source pet food on the road, even for large breeds or special diets

•        To handle emergency vet care far from home and why digital records are super important

•        Exotic pets can work on the road

•        To help pets adjust to a new rig and frequent moves

•        To avoid impulse adoptions (and what can happen when you don’t)

Links & Resources:

🚐 RV Roofing Solutions (sponsor): rvroofingsolutions.com

🐾 RVing with Pets (blog): learntorv.com/traveling-with-pets

🐕 Ashley & Steve — Campfires & Motors: campfiresandmotors.com

🦔 Teal — Towed You So: towedyouso.com

🐶 Westley the Frug

🏪 Tractor Supply (pet food + in-store vet clinics): tractorsupply.com

👥 Join Our Free Facebook Community: Learn to RV: The Community

📸 Follow Our Adventures: @LearnToRV

👉 More RV Life Resources: learntorv.com

📺 Watch on YouTube: Learn To RV Channel

🎙️ Podcast Website: learntorvthepodcast.com

💛 Support the Podcast:

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:04

We're here back at the Learn to RV podcast, and we're so excited you're here. Tonight's a really special episode because we don't have one guest co-host. We have three guest co-hosts. So that's gonna be fun. The first one, you might have known them before. They've been on our community spotlight series. You want to tell us who you are so we can go from there?

SPEAKER_04 0:22

Good.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Awesome. We have two teenage kids that are gonna hopefully be quiet during this episode.

SPEAKER_05 0:32

And and of course you have a pet on the road too, right? Because that's why you're here.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

You can probably hear him, but yeah.

SPEAKER_05 0:38

He's wanted in the background. Okay. And then we have Teal here, and Teal is kind of a unique situation because she has. I want to keep it kind of under wraps what you have, like in your house, but you have an exotic pet in your house, correct?

SPEAKER_03 0:51

I I do. Um, so I have an exotic, as well as we also have a very weird breed of dog that nobody ever knows what she is. That's awesome. We like to keep it weird.

SPEAKER_05 1:00

All right. Well, that's it's gonna be a fun episode. So tonight we're gonna talk about all the things that you may or may not have thought of on the road with your pets. So starting from the top, I kind of like to start with, you know, kind of what I have had over the years, and I have had so many, but we actually launched with just two cats on the road and uh watching.

SPEAKER_06 1:19

I wore something in honor of you. Oh like I do, like I do. I dressed for the occasion. I wore a shirt with birds because when I met you, you had pet birds.

SPEAKER_05 1:31

I did, I did. I've had several pet birds over the years in the RV. But we we only launched originally with cats and a 30-foot toy hauler with no slides, six kids and two cats, and that was plenty, but it was it was a thing, right? So it was just a different situation back then. But I think there's so many things that people that go camping, most of us we bring our dogs, but going camping full-time, bringing our pets or our kids when they want a different kind of pet. We've been through all of those. So we're gonna get into that.

SPEAKER_06 1:59

But you travel with pets as well, right, Tasha? I do. We brought, and I've mentioned him before, he is our very beloved, very curmudgeon 17-year-old cat Edward. Um, he may or may not be named from or for a very sparkly vampire. And um we also have he used to have a sister named Alice, but she is no longer with us. And then we have Stella, our now five-year-old little white shitsu. We think she might be a blend. That doesn't feel like the right word. What is the word? Not a blend. She's not like a cocktail.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

She's a designer dog.

SPEAKER_06 2:47

That's what mine are. Mine are designer braids.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

Yes. But we had a designer dog for 17 years. Designer dog.

SPEAKER_06 2:55

We got her, we got her second hand, if you will. Um, my brother gave her to us uh in 2020, and he was told that she was full bred, but she just doesn't quite look like it. We have no papers for her or anything, so I can't guarantee it. But we were told she's a shisuo, so that's what I say. But she's she's cute.

SPEAKER_05 3:17

So I want to hop into, you know, especially with pet food on the road. So my dogs eat a pretty high-end brand. I can only get that at like Petco and a couple other more exotic pet shops across the country, or I have to mail order it. How do you guys handle pet food on the road? Because with a special diet of any kind, you have to think outside the box. You know, we have to know how long it's gonna last us, that sort of thing. Do you have some kind of plan if you run out of food? I guess I should tell you that I was gonna say, I guess I should tell you that when we run out of food, my husband just cooks my dogs turkey and an egg. So there's that. He does do that.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

So we what do you use? We use uh Ukonuba for our dog. I mean, you we can get that uh pretty much anywhere. You know, Walmart usually is where we get it from. We usually buy a 40 pound 40 pound bag a month that we go through at least. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_06 4:08

Where do you store that?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

We've never how much already a 40-pound bag at a time from Walmart. We have a separate uh, you know, like a big tote with a screw lid on the top that is weather sealed, so we just keep that outside under underneath the camper. And then we'll just stick it in the back of the truck when we're traveling.

SPEAKER_06 4:27

Oh, that's smart. Can I ask what type of dog you have?

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Oh, yeah, we have a uh a Belgian Malinois, but a larger breed, so the he eats a lot of food. He's probably about what 80 pounds, 85, 85 pounds. Oh, he's so pretty though.

SPEAKER_06 4:39

That makes more sense to me. My dog is 10 pounds soaking wet, so it's like that's a lot of food. No, that makes more sense to me. Teal, what do you guys do for food?

SPEAKER_03 4:51

So Sassy, our Vishla, she is a sporting breed, so she's very high energy. She needs a high protein food year-round. Lucky for us, the food that she took to the best as a puppy is available at tractor supply. So we just plan out tractor supply trips. We do know when we get into colder climates as well as just kind of that kind of colder period. If we're under 50 degrees, sassy has to take an extra like fat supplement, basically. If only we all had that problem because she has a hard time holding weight. So come winter time, we know sassy needs, we also do like the 50-pound bag of food. And but for sassy, now originally when we took off, we had two dogs that were the same breed that were both very high energy. We always needed high protein. We got used to buying like the 50-pound bag, so that's what we still do. Now I have to do it like every other month versus once a month the way that I did before. But yeah, so everything that we need for Sassy, we can get at Tractor Supply, which makes it really easy. I know, Jennifer, probably one of your questions is gonna be also about like vet care. Tractor supply is another resource that we use because they're nationwide, and but there's a very large chunk of them that actually have an on-staff veterinarian. So that's the way that we've done Sassy's records for the last four years. The tractor supply in our hometown had one. So we were like, cool, can we do this everywhere? And they were like, Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 6:15

So, how do you find out where the tractor supply are that has that for you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

Um, in the tractor supply app is kind of our go-to. Sassy is one of those cool ones that she hangs out right on that 50-55 pound mark, which for all of your flea and tick preventative, your heartworm, everything else, 55 pounds is your cutoff. So, in order to do any of her medications, she has to go in and get weighed every time. We had her dad, and her he was the same way. He hung out right in that little gap. And so every time we needed to refill, he had to go in. It was just part of it for us. So that's we use the Tractor Supply app to find out what locations. And then if it's a location that doesn't have a veterinarian on staff, a lot of them will still do low-cost clinics and they'll go in because I have all of her records. She just has to go in and jump on the scale in order for her to get approval for her next dose, basically.

SPEAKER_05 7:06

What about you, Tasha? Where where do you get your food for your dogs?

SPEAKER_06 7:10

We get our food. Our our pets are also on, they're on Hill Science. And so we go to Pet Smart, Pet Co, Pet Enter Otherword here, whatever store that we can find that has it near us. But sometimes we can't find those locations. We know that it can be difficult to find. So we will buy like we try to buy a month at a time. And the other thing is that Stella, I don't know if it's her teeth or that she's just so precious, she can't handle it, but she refuses to eat dry food. So from like right out the gate, she as soon as we got her, she's been eating wet, like canned food. So we have that issue as well. Is like, and she has a very sensitive stomach, so we have to get the sensitive wet food for small breed. So it's like, you know, if we can't find it at one store, then we have to go find the other high-end pet food store so that we can see if they've got it in stock. And so when we find it, it's like get as much as we need for a month because it's gonna be hard to find.

SPEAKER_05 8:26

See, I feel that, but my situation is so different. So, like our Frenchies, the reason so they're half Frenchie, half pug. So they're frogs, and so yes, designer breed. But and they were they're from California, so they're legitimately a designer breed. I actually picked them up from underneath the Cabazon Dinosaurs.

SPEAKER_06 8:43

I met the breeder there. I was expecting you to say that you got them in the fashion district, like at the wedding.

SPEAKER_05 8:49

No, no, we got them the Cabazon Dinosaurs. We've joked for years when whenever we drive there, hey, let's go visit your mom and dad, because that's where I picked them up. We have Wesley with with the dogs. When we got them, it was they're they're four and a half years old. So we got them on the road, and that's one of the things that you know is hard. Has any one of us here adopted on the road? No. Okay, so we're gonna get into that, but I'm gonna be the only one. So I've done it twice now. But the only way you can do it, really, a lot of times, because rescues won't even touch you, is a private breeder or Craigslist, which is where these guys came from. I didn't have enough money for both of them because we were in California and it was a designer breed. And I had no intention of coming home with two of them, but my daughter fell in love with one and she fell in love with Millie. Millie came home with us. I gave the breeder that money and I gave her the deposit for Wesley because I was coming home with Wesley. So she agreed to meet me back there the next week and bring me back my dog. And so I had to move some money and get him. But his poor little face going back with the breeder, and I just I couldn't. And so we have a brother and sister, which I don't recommend, but that's a whole nother topic entirely. But then this past fall, we Gus actually adopted my daughter actually adopted a cat, and she did it from a pet co. And I'm sure they would have never adopted to us had the rescue been there because we're full-time and we weren't anywhere in Texas when this happened. We walked in and I had just bought our other cat some food, and I'm walking out with it, and my daughter texts me and she says, Hey, mom, there's a kitten here. I want to look at it. And I was like, Oh no. They had broken up with their significant other, and so when I say this was an emotional purchase, it was 100% an emotional purchase. The guy behind the counter looks at the food that I'm buying and goes, Oh, you're approved. I was like, Excuse me. And they're like, Well, the cat's gonna have a really good life because you buy really good cat food.

SPEAKER_06 10:46

I feel bad for honey lemon though, because honey lemon's a rebound.

SPEAKER_05 10:51

She is, but she's a cute rebound. She's sleeping. But yeah, she's a cute rebound. So, but she's a a sweet little girl. So hopefully she moves out with my kids when they move out. But you know, that hasn't worked in my favor in the past. So let's get into other vet care because there's some other vet care that I know some of us have dealt with on the road. How many of you guys have dealt with emergency vet care on them? I did. So okay, all of this. Great. So I mean, I'd love for you know, Ashley and Steve to kick off because we did do actually a whole like blog about your dog's experience. If you could give us a first line kind of conversation about what that looked like.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Okay, so it ours happened when I was at the dog park with him that morning. He's not the type of dog that other dogs can be around, which is we haven't figured out how to get him to play nice, so to speak. But he was in the dog park and he was running around playing, and there was a camper across, like directly across from where the uh dog park is, and he opened his door, and when he opened the door, his dog got out. So his dog got out, ran like straight toward the dog park and caught our dog off guard. And then they started running along the fence, and his um metal collar that we put on him when we walked with him got tangled up in the fence. It wasn't until I was getting ready to leave the dog park after I got him untangled, got him calmed down, made sure that the owner had his dog. It wasn't until then that I realized that he was actually bleeding. Um I don't really know exactly how he got hurt. I don't my only thought was that it was the fence. Um, so I got him back on his leash and I walked to the camper and we went from there. We ended up having to take him to the vet. Um, he got what, 24 stitches and 10 staples?

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Yeah, they did two layers of of uh staples. He had a tear, like basically a skin tear. It wasn't very deep, but it was like this fur and skin was pulled back right behind his right, you know, front leg or fall, his shoulder there. So you ended up getting like 10 staple or stitches underneath, and then they put more stitches on top and then 10 staples to close it up. So I think it was like twenty staples and ten stitches or something like that.

SPEAKER_05 13:04

Yeah. Now, did you have to extend your stay where you were in order to make sure that he got back to that vet to get the staples out, or were they dissolving stitches?

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Uh well they were the s they were dissolving stitches, but we had to plan ahead to be able to take him back to have them take the stables the staples out.

SPEAKER_05 13:21

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

So we we actually did that during the Friday of the Yeah, the Friday of the super show that morning we ended up taking him in, dealing with all that, taking him back, making sure he was settled with the kids and then driving to the super show. But he didn't even know he was never phased him.

SPEAKER_05 13:39

So, I mean, you know, having a reactive dog, actually, my daughter's dog, Millie, is very reactive and everybody thinks she's approachable. And so we have a little thing that says do not pet on her leash. Millie is part pug, and she looks part pug, but she has the embodiment of a bulldog female. When people approach you, you know, we ask them not to approach us. I never thought I'd have a reactive dog, but it's it's hard because people don't think that they think their presence is no big deal. So, what do you do to fix that for your situation?

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Our dog is fine around people. He loves people and people can pat him all that. It's just other dogs that he's uh not fond of.

SPEAKER_04 14:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

So for walking, we usually steer clear of other dogs as we're walking around the campground and stuff like that. But people-wise, he's perfectly fine. He loves people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:25

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Back to the injury, real quick. I mean, the big key takeaway from that is you know, knowing basically kind of like what vets are in the area. Luckily we were in an area we're familiar with, and that's okay. It was the place where we're domiciled at, so we go there a couple times a year and and stay for a little while. But we called his vet and they weren't able to handle that day. They didn't have the staff, so then we had to call around and find another vet. Luckily we were to find one close by because our vet recommended one that was like 45 minutes away. Yeah. So luckily we were to find one within the same town and they were able to, you know, take him right away and you know, get them taken care of.

SPEAKER_05 15:00

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

That's that's the big key takeaway. It's kind of whenever every time we go to a new area now, it kinda oh, at least I'll look up on Google Maps, you know, like emergency vets or vets that are close by just in case something happens again, at least we're kind of somewhat prepared.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

Yeah, for sure. I think with having the the the term reactive always kind of gets me, because like with Sassy, Sassy looks very friendly. She's a sporting dog, she looks very similar to a Ymariner, and she loves people, she loves children, but if another dog comes at her very quickly, she's been attacked not once but twice. So she's like, how about no? So John actually likes to make the joke that sassy is the reason that when people are like passing me on a walk, I can just be like not friendly. And I'm talking about me, but I'm also talking about the dog. And so he makes that joke every time when I'm like, she's not friendly, and he's like, the dog or you? I'm like, well, that's not very nice. I'm very friendly. But because for Sassy, she's not reactive, she's not going to be the one that initiates. However, if you come at her, she's had two other dogs jump out of nowhere and attack her, one leading to stitches and one just leading to an open wound. So she's like, not about it. You bit her twice, she's done. She also is one that is very reactive or responsive to small dogs because both of them were dogs that were smaller than her. Because she is very sweet. She's very, like, she's not a barker. Most people are like, wait, you have a dog? Like, I do. You don't know it because she thinks she's a cat, but it's fine. She like, because she does. She doesn't, she's not a barker. She takes her two to three walks every day. So if you don't see us on a walk, you won't know that we have a dog because that's just she's 11. She's she's good with it. But yeah, but back to being that that kind of responsive knowing your dog and knowing what's around, I think is important. And then Steve also said about like records and about knowing where the vets are, keeping your records easily accessible, I think is super important. We had an incident where we did have to take Sassy in. This was the second time that she got attacked. Dog ran out from between two campers, was supposedly attached to a tether that nobody really seemed to know where it was after the fact, of course. Um, so and I had two dogs at the time. And so I went to reach for both of them. I picked up one, but I could not get a grip on Sassy to be able to lift her up. So luckily, that one we didn't have to get stitches or do anything with. It was just an open wound, but we still had to go in, verify our records, their records, and all that for vaccination purposes. But knowing where those records are, like I said, that's something that is it's a quick grab. I've actually I started after that one, I kept screenshots on my phone. So all of her vaccination records and everything, all I have to do is pull out my phone. It's like, look, here it is. So that if we do go into another vet and they're asking questions, I travel full time. You can look at this dog and know that she's like treated like a queen, and here's all of her records. Um, and so we never really got questioned about it. Um, and the other thing that we dealt with that I'm sure Ashley and Steve, you guys have dealt with too, with having a breed that people can kind of recognize, and especially vets recognize, as it's like, this is for lack of a better term, this is an expensive dog. And so people look at it and they're like, oh, okay, but you have this dog, why and how? And like for me, I'm like, I was a breeder that I have 27 puppies nationwide. Like, I know this breed more than most. So go ahead, question me. Let's go. What do you got? Um, so so knowing your dog and being prepared for good, we did have a little bit of judgment when we walked into that vet. And it was like, well, what do you mean you travel full time? I'm like, my dog has been to more states than some people. Like, yeah, she's hiking places some people only see pictures of. Trust me, don't don't worry about the dog's well-being. Right now, I need you to look at the open wound on her leg. Like, that's what's important here. So, so when you're taking a dog into the vet, I feel like be prepared for those, but no different than I mean, as nomads, I feel like we deal with that all the time though. So just mentally prepare yourself as you're walking into that one, that that's a possibility.

SPEAKER_05 19:09

And we ran into that last winter. We were down here in Florida, and Millie likes to sniff. You know, she I there's an old book called The Pokey Little Puppy, and that is totally Millie. Nose to the ground, she's gonna wander, she's gonna sniff. She got bit by something, stung, we think. Her face started swelling, and within an hour, like I'm taking pictures the whole time because I I did go to vet tech school. It was, and but so the the place we went to from Thousand Trails Orlando wasn't 50, it was 50 minutes away with traffic. But by the time you got there, it was almost an hour and 10 minutes. And by the time we got there, she was just and so it was scary, you know. She was going into anaphylactic shock, and you know, I was thankful that we had the money to do it because she had to spend the night, and then you know, the next day she had to stay half a day, but it was scary, and now every time she gets stung, now we carry Benadryl on us on a regular just in case, because you never know when that's gonna happen again. But I mean, it's just a scary feeling that you're gonna lose your pet on the road to something that's outside of your control, it's just more than that. And I mean, we've had aging cats, we've lost pets on the road, but Tasha, you did an emergency event visit for Edward not that long ago, didn't you?

SPEAKER_06 20:19

Uh not for Edward. We did one for Stella. I thought I was gonna have to do one for Edward. Keep thinking that I'm gonna have to do one for Edward, but I that poor little guy, he keeps hanging on. He really is the epitome of a cat with nine lives. But no, Stella, there's been two instances in the last year where we've had to do an emergency vet trip with her, and it's because she's gotten into something on a walk or something. She likes to chew on grass when you're walking, or she starts sniffing around and then she starts chewing on grass and then she makes herself sick. And when we were in the keys, she did this last year, and there is a veterinary clinic, marathon veterinary clinic. If you ever have an emergency and you were in the keys, marathon veterinary clinic is 10 out of 10, would go again. They are amazing, but she just very quickly went from active little pup to would not get up, wasn't doing anything, wouldn't eat, wouldn't drink. Um, she she was just not moving. And so we took her in and they had her back to normal in just a few days. Uh, just really took care of her. Uh, and then she did it again in Kentucky, maybe, uh, just a couple months ago. And she got into something. I don't know what she gets into, but I'm also n you know, the kids' walker. So they just need to keep a better eye on her. But yeah, she so that's actually where I'm going next.

SPEAKER_05 21:55

Who is the walker in your household?

SPEAKER_06 21:57

It's the kids.

SPEAKER_04 21:58

Both of us.

SPEAKER_06 22:00

We both do it. And Matt. Matt's sitting next to me going like this. He he wants his uh his dues.

SPEAKER_05 22:08

And Teal, are you the walker in your household for the most part?

SPEAKER_03 22:11

We all are. Um, I walk in the morning and in the evening with Sassy, and then the kids normally take her out, like each kid takes turn, basically. And so she goes, but she also is super active. So as she's gotten older now, she's like, yeah, okay, not really about these longer walks, but she she still goes, sometimes begrudgingly.

SPEAKER_05 22:31

So on that note, I do not have active dogs. I have frogs. That means they're half Frenchie, half pug. The reason we have frogs is because my son Micah has a puggle and she's seven and a half. He couldn't afford a bike, and there's a bike named a Chinelli, so he named the dog Chinelli. But she attached herself to my husband. We were preparing for Micah to move out because he was old enough, well old enough to move out. And um, we had a VA guy go, you know, you need to get your husband a dog. And so I'm like, great idea. I'm gonna get him a dog. And so it looks kind of like Chinelli. It's half Frenchie, that's what I want. It's half pug. Chinelli's half a pug. We're missing the half a beagle. So I have what I call running potatoes. They have bursts of energy that are 32 seconds long, and then they stop. And and Wesley, when he was a puppy, I don't know if any of you have ever had your dogs get out, but we were in Palm Springs Thousand Trails, and the lady across the street was cooking, and the dog smelled it. And we did not carry like a little fence back then. We now carry a little fence because catching a running potato is a nightmare. But she fed him rabbit. Oh, and so for the next six months to a year, he would go bolting out the front door, thinking if he got outside, he was gonna go find the lady cooking rabbit again. And so so, yes, I I I have all the all the things that I never said I would have. You know, I have them. I have a dog that will eat you if you come too close, and we have to say, please don't touch her. We have to put her in back when you're coming over. And once she gets to know you, it's pretty okay. Right, she's she gets to know you pretty well. Yeah, so let Tasha in now. But you know, six months from now, that may not be true anymore.

SPEAKER_06 24:09

I know, I but then you have Wesley Millie, friend, not food. And then she's like, Oh yeah, I remember you.

SPEAKER_05 24:16

Now Wesley does have his own Instagram. Do any of your pets have their own channel? Oh, yes. So Wesley Wesley is Wesley the frog, so you can go find him and follow him. He he is adventures. So we got Frank a dog he has to backpack versus a dog that he can go hiking with. Yep. So I'm gonna switch gears just a little bit and we're gonna go into something that I know a couple of us have some experience with, and that's exotics. So it's kind of a different dynamic when you have exotics on the road. For us, we had the two cats, and my son wanted a ferret, which seemed like a great idea. But if you've never done ferret math, there is the problem in itself. So we got Jarrett the ferret, and Jarrett the Ferret was two years old when we decided that he was losing weight. But Jarrett was very deaf, and so Jarrett and the next ferret didn't get along, and so now we needed another ferret so that the deaf ferret could have another ferret to talk to. And so one in three got along great. So D'Artagnan was wonderful with Jarrett, but Joji was like a jerk, he would bite people, he was everything that we didn't want in a ferret. But anyway, then of course Joji got sad, and so now Joji needs to get another one. So for a time, we were traveling with four ferrets, and then we actually lost Jarrett very unexpectedly. He went into pancreatic failure, and we were in California at the time. If you don't know, it's not legal to have a ferret in every state, and so we had to go to ferret underground and find out where to go. We went from Palm Springs to Vegas, and he did not make it because he was already too deep in failure to do anything. Then we were back to three, and then we added one more, and that was the end of the ferrets. We actually just lost our last ferret in 2025, and so we are ferretless, but um, it was a crazy run, and I don't know that I'd recommend it, but they were containable, they were in, you know, their cage when they weren't out, and you know, you they they weren't ever out all the time, so for us it was a contained pet, which was great, and they would only come out for like two hours, and then they would go back and sleep for 22 hours. So I mean, like in that way, they were a great pet. The thing we had to worry about was they overheated, so just like a Frenchie. Um, and then we were we were at a park in uh Florida one year, and some guy comes knocking on our door and he's like, Do you have ferrets? And I'm like, Yeah, why? He's like, They're in the fire pit. I'm like, what? What? And so we go running outside and they're in the ashes, jumping around, thinking it's great. They're like covered in soot. Thank God it was cold. Yes, but ferret math is a problem, and ferret problems are a problem, but exotics have their own set of issues. We've also had a beer a bird or two or three on the road, and so that that has dust and all sorts of extra things. And then we were at a show in Texas, I think. Yeah, a big big exotic pet show, and my son decided a sandboa would be fun, and so we traveled with a sandboa for a little bit, and um, he moved out with Hezekiah, which is great because I don't have to fight him food because sandboas, what they don't tell you is they don't like to eat frozen food at all. So you were hunting pinkies everywhere across the country, and not all states can you get pinkies, so that is now not my problem. Exotics have their own set of challenges, but teal has an exotic that's kind of different, and I you're actually the first person I've known that's actually had this animal on the road.

SPEAKER_03 27:54

Yeah. So so the the backstory here, so growing up, my mom was a science teacher. So as a kid, we had everything from we had a boa at one point, we've had lizards, bearded dragons, ferrets, chinchillas, guinea pigs, multiple rats, and we've had animals that needed live food. We had animals that would eat frozen food, we've we've had everything in the middle. Um, so we were actually, we had kind of discussed this previously, and I was like, I just I don't know, like I feel like on the road, this could be a lot. And believe it or not, you guys have all met my husband. Listeners, if you haven't, go find him on Facebook. He's weird, it's fine. And he actually agreed and was like, I think this is a great idea. Like, I think the kids are gonna love it. And I'm like, you didn't even want another dog, and you're okay, okay, okay, this is fine. So then we were actually we discussed it, gone back and forth. Him and I had kind of agreed, but we didn't tell the children. So we're on a hike in Bryce Canyon in August. It's like a billion degrees outside, and I really there was a hike that I really wanted to do. It was like seven miles long, and so I was like, we're gonna go, and everybody's fighting me on this hike. And I'm like, it's fine. So then we got the kids talking about all kinds of things and what kind of pets they wanted, what kind of travel plans we were looking at for the next few years, like just tossing ideas around. And so then my son is like, I really, really want to do this, and I want it to be like white with brown spots, and we're gonna call it s'mores. Or we can get one that's all white and we could call it marshmallow. And I'm like, all right. And I was like, Well, if we get first of all, all white ones tend to have more health problems, so I don't know that I'm okay with that, but like white with brown spots would be cool. And I like s'mores, I can get behind this. And so he was like, Really? And I was like, Yeah, like I think we could do this. So this was like mile three. By the time we got to the end of the hike, he had named it, he knew where the cage was going, he knew where we were picking it up, he was ready to get back in the truck and get Wi-Fi so that he could start Googling breeders and where we were gonna find one. Now, the really fun part is we were headed from Bryce Canyon up to Montana, over to Minnesota, and then back down to Texas. So, quite literally, he has the entire country to find breeders, okay? Um, he ends up actually finding a breeder that was probably 30 minutes away from our house back in Texas. And so he was like, all right, when we get back to Texas, we're gonna go get one. I was like, cool. He gets a hold of the breeder, he does all the stuff himself. And so then we get to Texas and don't worry, we made it a whole like 48 hours from the time we got to our house before we had to go to the breeder and pick up S'mores, the African pygmy hedgehog. Uh's has now been on the road with us since probably the first of November. She loves travel life. She's also like the highlight of every campground. As soon as people are like, wait, you have a what? And I'm like, I have a hedgehog. She's she's pretty cool. She's pretty chill. Things you don't know about hedgehogs, they're primarily nocturnal. So they're basically blind. She can see when the lights are off. That's about it. But because of that, she has a really good sense of smell and she hears absolutely everything. She also only stays awake for about an hour and a half every day during our regular day. And then during the nighttime, she plays and runs around in her cage and is happy as a clam. You can play with her all day, or you could not play with her at all, and she doesn't care. They also tend to be very particular about their people. So they tend to find their couple of people, and those are their people. We joke that S'mores has zero survival instinct because she quite literally sleeps on her side, belly exposed, like whatever. Hedgehogs are not supposed to do that, by the way. They're supposed to sleep in a bowl in a defensive position. She doesn't. I can, she's actually she's in her cage about two feet away from me right now, and she hears me saying her name. And so she's starting to move around a little bit. Like, wait, hold up. What are we doing? They identify voices. So if I'm talking, she knows, like, mom's here, it's school. Like, I don't have to worry about anything, but there could potentially be food or treats involved. So maybe I'm gonna attention. That's where she's at right now. It's like she said my name. That's awesome. That there's something here. Yeah, so I know, Jennifer, you probably had some questions about a hedgehog on the road.

SPEAKER_05 32:21

So go ahead. So hedgehogs are so I I think it's you know very interesting to have a hedgehog on the road. And it's such a different dynamic. It's kind of like ferrets. Everybody wanted to see our ferrets. You know, what do they eat?

SPEAKER_06 32:31

I feel like the most important question is can we see the hedgehog? Listeners and viewers on YouTube at home want to see the hedgehog.

SPEAKER_03 32:44

We I'm gonna answer the question and then I'll let y'all talk for a second and I'll pick her up. Yeah, okay. What does she eat? So she is technically they are insectivores, so she eats mule worms and bugs, and then she has a specialty food. They eat a lot of like vegetables and greens in the wild. So she has a specialty food that we pick up from her breeder. You can purchase it in like a 10-pound bag that lasts herb six to nine months, basically. So she has an airtight container up by her cage that has some in it, and then we've got another sealed airtight bag underneath the bed that we can pull out whenever we need more. Um then, as well as her breeder also will ship food to us if we need it. So that's awesome. Yeah, that that makes it really easy. Yeah, that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_06 33:28

Awesome.

SPEAKER_03 33:29

It's fun. All right, I'm gonna disappear for a second. Y'all can talk about the weirdness of having a hedgehog.

SPEAKER_05 33:33

Well, actually, I'm actually gonna so that's not the weirdest thing that I've heard of having on the road. So, and you're all gonna die when I tell you this story. So we were at River years ago, and it was egg season at Tractor Supply, and so Hezekiah decided he wanted a bird, so he got two ducks, and so we actually traveled with two ducks, learned how to make duck diapers and all the things, and you know, so we were at one campground. We finally rehomed them. They went to showcase of citrus up the street from here years ago because they just got too big because when we'd open the door, they'd go hawk quack qua and we'd have to tell the dogs to stop barking, and we knew we were gonna be in trouble at some point. So, like little tiny things. I do not recommend ducks on the road, they get big.

SPEAKER_03 34:21

We've met a family that has chickens. We saw a lady walking a pig the other day. That was that was cool. We've seen that, but we've seen a horse. Like cute little potbelly pig. This was like big, like 150-pound pig walking to the campground. It was very strange.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Oh my god, okay, don't put my hedgehog on a leaf. All kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_06 34:38

Much to John's dismay. Sorry. Again, the most important thing that needs to be said right now, if you are not watching on YouTube, you are missing out because S'mores has made its entrance. And this is so cute.

SPEAKER_03 34:58

So she's closing because if you look, she has racing stripes. She has a white stripe that goes down both sides. And then if you look, let me see if she'll cooperate to be able to. She has one pink ear and one black ear. My gosh, you're so cute. She also is like, no, I don't want to be on the camera. The light is also bright, so she's like, I don't like the light. I'm gonna hide over. I feel that. You're an animal. Here's the fun one. Who do you think takes complete ownership over the hedgehog? It's not the children.

SPEAKER_05 35:33

I think it's your husband.

SPEAKER_03 35:34

This is this is John's pet, guys. 100%. He calls it his emotional support hedgehog. She will sit on his shoulder while he watches TV. Like happy as can be. He got a haircut about a week ago. She was not very happy about it because now she can't have anything into his neck and hide in his hair. Yep. They are burrowers, but they are also climbers. Fun S'more's story the other day. We had gone on a cruise. Her cage was down in the living room. Normally it's up in the loft with Callan, but she was down in the living room, and apparently nobody put her lid on completely. So S'mores got potentially an entire night of adventuring through the house. She had free rain. It could have been a couple hours, it could have been all night. I don't really know. I know that when I got up at 5:30, this little thing darted from one side of the living room to the other. And I was like, what is this? Definitely freaked out a little bit, thought it was sleep deprivation, and then I was like, hold on. That that is a headshot. So yeah, she's had complete free reign. She just wanted to live up to her racing stripes, you know. There you go. Watch me on speedy. They are incredibly fast.

SPEAKER_05 36:52

Um, how did you catch her?

SPEAKER_03 36:56

She lets me pick her up like it's nothing. She'll actually, like, if she's on the floor, I can call her name and she'll come to me.

SPEAKER_05 37:03

So what you're saying is she has much better recall than my frog.

SPEAKER_03 37:08

Um, than my dog, personally. She she is very like, oh, this is my mom. She'll she'll sit here. She's curious because she sees my water bottle and she knows identifies the smell. So she's like, oh, there's water over there. I kind of want to go over there. She also knows that she is in front of the TV screen, which she's like, wait, hold on.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

Do I have to do this? When we first got her, that was a little bit more.

SPEAKER_03 37:30

Am I getting paid?

SPEAKER_02 37:31

Do I get paid for this? Wait, she's so cute.

SPEAKER_06 37:35

S'mores, you are the cutest. I am just in love.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

I think Tasha's buying a uh hedgehog.

SPEAKER_03 37:43

One of the questions we get asked a lot is about travel days and what do you do with the hedgehog on travel days? Think like a cat carrier backpack. That's what S'mores has. S'mores has been into Buckies a couple times. She's been into a couple different loves because she can't stay in the truck and backpack. So people just go crazy. Most of the time I carry her and like I have it kind of covered and she's like burrowed in there, so you can't necessarily see what it is. That's smart. Um, but yeah, um, she's she's she's been on some adventures. The other fun thing is kind of like your bearded dragons or any of your lizards, she can't get cold. So that's something that you don't really think about until you're boondocking and you're like, we can wake up and have it be 60 in here, but we can't let her do that. Um, she actually goes into like a borderline hibernation state, which is not good for her. So she has her own little, it's almost like a heat lamp, like you would use like in a chicken coop. And so if we know we're gonna be boondocking and it's gonna get cold overnight, she gets a heat lamp and she doesn't really seem to mind. She does not like to be cold though, and she will let you know.

SPEAKER_05 38:54

Well, and we had the opposite problem with the ferrets, they couldn't get over 80 degrees, and so we couldn't boondock in a lot of places because of that, but at the same time, then we had a snake, and so now we had the problem of we had to keep something warm, so we just didn't boondock most of the time at that point because there was just no way to successfully do that and you know still function. So there was there was that problem. All right, well, awesome. So, what would you say is your number one tip for going on the road with your pets? Ashley and Steve, let's go let you guys go first.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Like Teal said, just know your pet. Know what you need to bring with you, know what you need to have inside your camper as well as what you need to have as far as travel day. Like our dog, he just sleeps in between the kids in the back seat. But we have to make sure that we have his shot collar with him at all times. We gotta make sure we have his metal prone collar with him. We gotta make sure we have two different leashes just depending on where we're at. We used when we first got him, we used to have to have the kennel, but we don't use that anymore, so we don't we don't bring it with us. Um, always knowing where your a vet is gonna be. Where does he sleep? Uh he sleeps uh mainly on the couch or on the floor in our room about I don't know, like four or five o'clock in the morning, he'll jump up on our bed and then it's a it's a struggle with blankets once he gets up on the bed because he doesn't like to move and he takes the blanket with him.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

So it'll be like taking a boulder and placing it on your bed, and that's uh what you're sleeping with is a boulder.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yeah. We try to get him to sleep with the kids, but he won't go back there.

SPEAKER_05 40:26

Yeah, so I have a 29-pound little French bulldog mix, trust me, boulders and little rocks in the bed, and he can't get on the bed by himself. So, you know, we have to actually pick him up and put him in the bed. So it's our own fault that they sleep with us. That's the worst part. Millie actually used to sleep when she was little with Gus, and she had the loft in the toy hauler, but as soon as the two boys moved out, Gus moved to the back room and Millie refused to sleep with her. So we used to say she was like Rapunzel in the tower, and she because she would literally not jump out of that loft, and I don't know how it worked out, but you know, now she'll she'll climb to get to Frank. She has decided that Frank is her project, and so Millie will come out. She does yoga with Frank, she thinks Shivasna is the best thing ever. She calls it lickvasna because she's he's laying on the ground and she's just got the opportunity to lick his face, and he can't do anything about it at that point. So, yeah. Where are you, Tasha? Any any pointers and tips other than you know, make the kids walk the dogs?

SPEAKER_06 41:26

I do like that tip. I think it's important to give them time to get used to the new space. So, like we just moved into our new rig this last week. It has been chaos in a handbasket. And we moved Stella in first and we kind of let her get herself situated. She's still not quite there, but she's starting to get used to things. And we brought Edward over last. So that gave that actually I think helped him because it gave him time to de-stress from the hyperness of having Stella in his face all the time before bringing him to a new space. And then we brought him over and just been in the garage for these first few days that he's been in here, just letting him get used to the toy hauler and kind of learn the space and where his litter box is. And so just not over stressing them out, I think, is really important because you are moving every few weeks or whatever, and so it is a lot of change. So just giving them points of familiarity is really important.

SPEAKER_05 42:37

Yeah. Well, and I think it's important to say right now, you know, he's not just in a garage, the garage has an air conditioner and it's actually the kids' room.

SPEAKER_06 42:44

So yes, and two people that he knows. It's you know, it's not just in a big empty box, he has, you know, lots of comfortable things in there. He's actually David gets so frustrated because by the time David wakes up, Edward has already claimed David's recliner for his own. And so Eddie has like kicked the cat out of the recliner so that he can sit in it. And I'm like, good luck with that. But it is what it is. You got the cat a throne.

SPEAKER_05 43:10

It's always good when you get a cat of throne. Exactly. How about you, Chile? Do you have any words of wisdom? Like in terms of research, especially, because you know, when you're getting into exotics, it's a whole new level.

SPEAKER_03 43:23

Know what you're getting into. Make sure you do your research. Like I said, we knew what we were doing as far as food, we knew temperatures, we knew some of kind of the hiccups that we could potentially have. And so we were able to prepare for them better, no difference than maintenance on your rig. You you gotta know what you're getting into. Do your homework. If you can prepare, you can plan for the potential contingencies of things that are not gonna work and then go from there.

SPEAKER_05 43:48

And well, and knowing how to pivot, you know, is is a big part of that, you know. So the one thing I would tell you is never do something um like a vacation style, like adoption. Option, just don't do it because you might end up with two hermit crabs that come across through multiple climates. And we traveled with hermit crabs. So our first year in Florida, we were out at John's Pass, and you know they've got oodles of hermit crabs out at like different beach locations, and so they're climbing this edge of the thing, and they're just it's gonna be so fun to have hermit crabs, right? Well, it was until one got out, and then we would see him occasionally wandering through the camper as we traveled. The only advantage we had in that camper is it had no slides, so there was nothing to crush him, and so I don't know how long he lived in there because he lived for quite some time on his own, because we never found him until we were moving out of that camper. His brother, on the other hand, went to the desert and we didn't keep him moist enough. And that's the unknown factor of like hermit crabs is once you take it's like an airplant, once you take it out of its climate, it may not do so well if you don't have the humidity. And so we didn't know that, didn't do the research. So I'm right there with Teal. If you're going to adopt something, don't do it spur of the moment, is what I would tell you. Because you know, those and we keep doing that. So you know, we might not be able to edify that statement. But yeah, so there's lots of information about pets on the road. We've got a blog coming out the same day this episode drops. But if you have questions about the hedgehog, about taking your dog to a vet because they had an issue on the road, or your cat, or whatever, we also had a ranch before we hit the road. So it's not surprising that I've had a whole slew of critters that have joined us in our adventures because the kids were used to having horses before we hit the road. So definitely a different dynamic. But anyway, don't forget to like and subscribe. You know, if you're on all of the socials, you've got Steven Ashley, they're at Camp Fires and Motors. You can find them on YouTube and they have a full webpage. Teal is at Toad You So, T-O-W-E-D, you so, and we'll have all that in the show notes. And Tasha just started a page called Martin Mayhem.

SPEAKER_06 46:00

It is so new that I can't tell you. I think that it's Martin Arbein Mayhem, but it literally just has like a picture of my family. So, you know, but also you can just come back here and find me every week, unless you're kicking me to the curb, which I have the channel.

SPEAKER_05 46:18

And if you want to go meet Wesley, you can go to Instagram. He has his own Instagram hashtag Wesley B-E-S-T-L-E-Y the Frog. F-R-U-G, not frog. Um, but thanks for tuning in this week. We appreciate you. We appreciate our appreciate our guest co hosts, and uh, we'll see you next week.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Wow.