Traveling with a pet … Iguana!

Have I ever told you about my pet iguana and how fun it was to travel with him? I think I have, but it’s been a while since I talked about the dear boy. Unfortunately he’s no longer with us, but I’m sure he had a good life as our pet in the 11 years that we had him.

Traveling with any kind of pet can be interesting to say the least. Some take to it well and others never get used to being in a moving vehicle. I suppose they invented dog and cat carriers for the pets that just plain don’t travel well.

When we had our iguana we traveled a lot. My parents lived in another city that was a five hour drive away. Luckily they loved our iguana, Napoleon, and we had the room that we always stayed in set up so that it was iguana friendly. Yes, our pet basically had two homes since we traveled to see my parents so often.

Getting a friend to take care of him for the weekend while we were away for the weekend or while we were on holidays just wasn’t an option.

I’m sure dog and cat owners know that even though it’s not that hard to get someone to keep an eye on your pet while you are away some people are better at it than others. Well … if we wanted to go somewhere that we couldn’t take our iguana we’d have to literally train someone to care for him. Never mind that most people were unnecessarily afraid of him. So he came with us on our trips.

Most of the time he was really good in the car. He didn’t like going under bridges and he’d freak out a bit when we went under an overpass, but otherwise he’d spend most of the car trip sitting in our cars back window looking out at the traffic and scenery that we passed.

I think that most people who saw us with our iguana probably thought that we had a seven foot iguana replica in our back window. However, some people would notice when he moved and oh my! I think we almost caused a few accidents! We’d literally have cars, trucks and buses following our car or driving along side trying to get a better look at my boy. It was scary for us at times because it was obvious the drivers weren’t paying attention to the road.

The funniest time was the bus full of passengers. We could tell that the driver got on the bus’ intercom and told everyone to look to their left at the iguana in the car beside them because everyone had their face firmly pressed to the glass.

In the wintertime we often had to put our iguana in a pet carrier to keep him warm in the car, or we’d set up heating pads in the back window area that he could lie on and keep warm. We also turned on the window defrost thingy to keep the window a bit warmer. If it was extremely cold out he was definitely in the pet carrier.

I only wish that we could have used one of those cute dog bags to keep him in or carry him around in. He was just too big for one of those though.

We did always take a pet carrier with us when we traveled. He really didn’t like it and that’s why he mostly spent his time in the back window of the car. Certainly if he wouldn’t have gotten so stressed in it we would have used it for him most of the time as I’m sure he’d have been safer in a pet carrier while traveling. As it was we always tried to drive very carefully.

It was good to have a pet carrier on hand in case he was misbehaving or say the worst thing happened such as our car breaking down or we got into an accident … without a pet carrier on hand we’d have no safe way to carry him around. Of course one of the other reasons he didn’t really like the pet carrier was because we used that for vet trips too, but that’s a whole other story!

Have you traveled with your pet? Do you have an interesting story to share?

If you do travel with your pet does your dog, cat or whatever other creature you might have roam free in your vehicle or do you use a pet carrier or some kind?