When the guinea pig died I decided to be pet-free but, after a few months, I was asked to rehome a male guinea pig whose family were emigrating. Tom has turned out to be much quieter than either of the two females I have previously owned and so I took him away one weekend to see how we got on. He sits quite happily in his cage on one of the seats and goes in his travel box in the toilet overnight. He seems to cope with the car travel and is an ideal caravan companion, apart from the hay and sawdust all over the floor.Recently I offered to take a dog whose elderly owner had died. He was a lovely old boy and I was looking forward to taking him caravanning, thinking of all the walks we would do. Unfortunately Pip turned out to be extremely active for his 14 years and would not settle if I was in the room. He was even worse when I took him up to the caravan at the storage yard - he was just not happy in the van and also had trouble negotiating the steps into it. I have very reluctantly decided that he is not the dog for me, because all my holidays plus some weekends are spent in the caravan and I don't see the point of having a dog if I can't take him on holiday with me. Now I am surprised again that so many people have dogs in caravans since not all dogs take to it and not all dogs travel well - Pip didn't, in spite of my buying a cage for him to travel in.
I will probably be looking enviously at dog-owners on my next caravan trip and wishing I could have taken Pip with me, however he has gone to a good home - one without a car or caravan.
