Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The holiday season, while wonderful in many ways, can be really, really stressful. That goes for you and your dog. With each celebration comes a lot of new people, travel, and disrupted routines and sleep schedules. All of that commotion can make this time of year especially difficult for our pets.
One of the biggest decisions you’ll have to make during the holidays as a dog owner is whether to bring your four-legged friend to the festive gathering. “If you have a dog who doesn’t have any behavior issues, aggression, reactivity, anxiety, is pretty easy going, pretty chill, they don’t mind the travel process, and they are generally eager to meet and be around people, and also know how to settle—those are the green-light dogs,” says Dr. Emily Levine, DVM and board-certified veterinary behaviorist. “Take them with you, enjoy, have fun.”
These totally chill dogs do exist! However, that’s a lot of “ifs,” and it’s more likely your dog has one or two (or three or four) characteristics that are completely normal, but can complicate things when it comes to holiday travel. Having those issues doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s always best to leave your dog at home; it just means that you need to think ahead on your dog’s behalf as you plan your travel. Below, we break down all of the factors you should consider when deciding to take your dog home for the holidays.
Make sure your dog is welcome at the host’s house
This is a big one and surprisingly easy to overlook: Before you go through the rigmarole of planning transport for your dog, make sure they’re welcome at your destination. The relatives or friends whose houses you’re going to during the holidays are partners in care for your pup. Though you are ultimately responsible, you’ll be communicating with the host about where the dog is going to sleep, eat, and hang while everyone else is cooking, eating, and celebrating. If your dog is not welcome at all, that’s really good to know. You don’t want to put your dog in a situation where they’re not going to succeed, so having the host’s buy-in is no small thing.
If your dog isn’t invited, you have a few options, the first being that they stay home with a trusted dog sitter. The second—and this could be a fraught family move—is that you stay home with your dog and miss the party. And the third, which Dr. Leslie Sinn, DVM and board-certified veterinary behaviorist, has suggested, is that you get an alternate place to stay that’s near the host’s place.
“A lot of my clients have had the best luck renting an Airbnb nearby rather than being in the middle of the scrum,” Dr. Sinn says. The renting option can also be helpful if the dog is invited, but it’s a challenging situation regardless. “Obviously if your dog has separation anxiety you can’t leave them in the Airbnb,” Dr. Sinn adds. “But the point being that you’ve got a place to go back to where you can decompress and everyone is not on top of each other. A lot of clients swear by that as a way to keep family togetherness intact.”
What’s worse for your pup: car/airplane travel or separation anxiety?
So you’ve gotten the OK from your host or landed a short term rental nearby. Now, consider how you’re getting there.
“One of the things that I see is that people chronically underestimate how stressful traveling is for their pet,” says Dr. Sinn. She points out that for many people, a dog is put in the car or their carrier only when they are on their way to the vet “where they tend to have stabby things done to them, so their association is not great.” Other dogs may experience motion sickness. Likewise, airports and plane rides present a lot of unusual spaces, smells, people, and situations, so dog anxiety can go through the roof. Sometimes the process of getting to your host’s house is just too stressful for your dog, so the kind thing to do is to leave them behind, where they can maintain all of their routines.
If separation anxiety is a bigger problem for your dog than travel, or you don’t have a good place to board them or a trustworthy person to stay with them, the lesser of two evils is to bring them along. Ease their anxieties around travel by gradually getting them used to their carrier and the car—it’s going to pay off big time during the holidays and also year round.
Dr. Sinn advises against putting them in a carrier for the first time (or the first time in a long time) when you head off on your trip. “They need to be trained to tolerate and hopefully like being transported in a carrier. I just see people who are like, we gotta travel now and we’re gonna haul the dog around like a piece of furniture and it’s actually fairly difficult for the dog,” she says
Always having the carrier out and open in your house, offering your dog food or treats inside the carrier, and taking them in it for short trips to fun locations that they like can help build those positive associations.
The process is similar with the car: Begin by simply sitting in the car for short periods of time, feeding them high value treats, and gradually work up to short trips to fun places. By the time the holidays roll around, they may have a more neutral take on transportation.
It’s the most difficult to prepare for actual plane rides, which you usually can’t practice ahead of time. For those, at the bare minimum, know where the pet relief areas at airports are and have a backup plan for missed connections and delayed flights. (And read up on the best practices for pet plane travel.)
If it’s too late for all that—or you’ve tried, and they still have trouble overcoming their stress—both Dr. Levine and Dr. Sinn recommend asking your veterinarian about medical intervention. Though meds are more of a last-minute solution than training, it does help to prepare with medication at least a month prior to major travel.
“Ideally you do that with enough time that you do a couple test doses first to make sure that actually it works,” Dr. Sinn suggests. “So you don’t end up surprised that actually it didn’t kick in. There’s huge variability on how these guys respond to these medications. You’d like to do it with enough lead time to figure out whether this is going to work.”
Understand what you and your dog will be walking into
OK, so your dog has been invited to the holiday gathering and he or she can handle transportation. The next question you can ask yourself is this: What are you and your dog walking into? 35 semi-strangers shouting at a ball game? Other dogs? Kids of all ages? Food everywhere? Have a conversation with your host about what to expect, and make a plan for your dog.
Sometimes the answer is simple: the level of partying is not appropriate for your dog—either they have anxiety about being around new people, they guard resources, they exhibit aggression, or some other normal, but notable reaction to all that goes into a holiday celebration. In these cases, the best thing for them is staying home with care.
If that’s not an option, there’s a lot you can do to protect your dog, the people around you, and the turkey on the counter. It just takes planning.
First, if there are other dogs in the mix, you and the other dogs’ owners should talk. “If one or both of the dogs don’t like other dogs, then you shouldn’t bring them, or they just have to be kept separate,” Dr. Levine says. “Let’s say they each are ‘dog selective,’ so they like dogs, but only particular dogs, ones with a certain play style, and only with a certain temperament: Ask the other person if it sounds like it could be a potential match.”
If you play matchmaker and you agree these dogs could get along, then introduce them to each other outside on neutral ground—that is, not in the host dog’s house, and especially not near food bowls or where he sleeps. Take a loose leash walk side by side. If that goes well, have them do some “sits” and “downs” for treats in each other’s presence. And if that goes well, you can take them inside.
Plan to do this at a reasonable time, which means arranging your arrival so that outside introductions “are feasible, rather than everybody barreling into the house at midnight praying that all will go well,” Dr. Sinn adds.
If they’re unlikely to get along, and the space is available to you, you can try to keep them in different areas. You can also explain to the other pet owner how to avoid your dog’s known pitfalls. For example, if one dog guards resources, then have everyone agree not to dump a big box of toys out in the living room.
Perhaps the number of people at the gathering is guaranteed to be stressful to your dog, or even any amount of new people makes them uncomfortable (and remember that sometimes family, as much as we know and love them, are functionally strangers to your dog). You can bring the dog and set up a safe room for them in the house, where they have familiar or mentally stimulating things, like their bed or crate, as well as treats to lick and chew. You can also bring a pen to provide a barrier where your dog can still see you, and still include all that good stuff.
Explain to the other guests that your dog is shy or stressed, and how to approach them.
“When you see a dog that is clearly uncomfortable, out of the kindness of their heart and with the best of intentions, humans want to show the dog that, ‘No, I’m nice,’” Dr. Levine says. “They do everything that really terrifies the dog even more. They approach the dog and kiss the dog and hug the dog. The best thing those people can really do is look away, and ignore the dog, and toss the dog treats.”
Sometimes your dog can acclimate to the room, but a safe room is nice to have in situations like these—or, again, if they’re very stressed in these situations, the best thing to do would be to leave them at home.
Finally: kids. Sometimes at holiday gatherings there are lots of children.
“If you have a dog that is not comfortable around kids—they growl, they lick their lips, they snap, they bite—then try management, 100%,” Dr. Levine says. That means providing barriers that your dog is accustomed to and tolerates well, whether that’s keeping the dog behind a closed door, in a crate, in a safety pen, or on a leash to avoid any accidents. Explain to the kids how to act around your dog, like how to not go near the dog’s food bowl or anything else they hold dear; how to recognize the signs of discomfort in dogs; and how to not make big, sudden movements around them. No matter how well they get along, any play should be supervised.
“The kids, they’re not being bad. The dog is not being bad. Everyone just has to go into it eyes wide open,” she adds.
Worst case scenario, if a dog who is not kid-friendly has to be in the same room as children, employ a basket muzzle (and be sure to get them used to it well ahead of time). If all of this sounds like too much or too risky, then—ding, ding, ding—yes, you guessed it: it’s probably wise to leave them home with great care or stay home with them yourself.
Bottom line: Plan ahead, over-communicate, and know what your dog can handle
Holiday travel can overwhelm both you and your dog. You’re not alone.
“It’s such a common time for setbacks,” Dr. Levine says. “Everything is different. People’s schedules and their stress levels and then visitors and people leaving and leaving them behind. It’s a common enough time for setbacks that if someone is calling me panicked, saying, ‘We have to readjust their meds,’ I say we just need to let [the dog] recover and they’ll go back to baseline.”
With enough planning, communication, or, in some cases, making the hard decision to leave your best friend behind, you can help turn down the noise, and everyone—pups included—can have a peaceful holiday season.
