You Asked, We Answered — Can I Travel with My Pets?

Since our foundation in 2001, we’ve received a lot of questions related to traveling with your families between assignments. But one of the most common questions we get is, “Can we travel with our pets?” We understand how important your pet pals are and want to make sure your furry, scaly or aquatic friends can make the journey, too.

Don’t take our word for it! Aya registered travel nurse, Kristen, shares her experience traveling with her dog, Beckett, and gives tips for how to make it work when traveling with your animal companion.

Audio transcript:

Hi, I’m Kristen! This is my dog, Beckett. She’s a goldendoodle. She’s six years old.

She has been with me from the start of my travel career, so it really wasn’t a choice of am I gonna take her or not? It was well, I’m taking her with me.

We started out in Washington, DC. Then we went to Long Island, New York, Seattle, made our way down to California, San Diego, LA and now we are in New Orleans, which is a little close to home! So, it’s been kind of nice.

What advice do you have for clinicians wanting to travel with their pets?

Some advice that I would give to anyone who’s thinking about traveling with their dogs: do it. Just do it.

It’s challenging, but it’s worth it. Every time I come home, Beckett is so excited to see me and just wants to be near me. That’s just really comforting, especially, you know, being alone for so long and travel nursing, going to all these new places and getting out of your comfort zone. I’d definitely say it’s worth having your four-legged friend there to help you through all of that.

How do you find housing with a pet?

Finding housing has its challenges. I mean, she’s a large dog and some places aren’t dog friendly. It’s hard, but you have to put the work in. Airbnb, Furnished Finder… You can always change your settings to pet-friendly and I have actually found if you reach out to someone and give them your situation, even if it’s not listed as pet friendly, they a lot of times are open to talking about it.

Thankfully all of my landlords have loved my dog, so I have a lot of good references and I think that’s definitely important going forward to find new housing in the future.

Do you fly or drive?

We drive to every assignment. We could fly, but honestly, it’s better to drive. We make a road trip out of it, see a lot of cool places, so that’s always what we’ve done and I wouldn’t do it any other way.

Are there certain places that have been more pet-friendly than others?

DC is pretty dog friendly, but I would say Seattle and California are way more dog friendly/pet friendly in general. We still had a lot of fun in DC, too. A lot of big cities are pretty pet friendly, especially on the West Coast. They love dogs. Seattle breweries were all dog friendly/pet friendly. You just made a whole day of it and it was a lot of fun.

What is one of the best things about traveling with a pet?

I always have a photo buddy. Always! So, it doesn’t matter where I am, if I want to get a picture it looks a lot better putting my dog in there with me instead of just me taking one by myself.

How has your experience traveling with a pet been?

Overall, I love traveling with my dog. I would not have it any other way.

My travel company, Aya, is wonderful and knows that I would not go anywhere I couldn’t take my dog. We have a lot more places we’re gonna go and we’re gonna enjoy every second of it.

I hope everyone gets a dog to travel with and loves it as much as I do because we have a blast, don’t we, Beckett?