Moving Cross Country With a Dog: The Drive Kit
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The lease starts on the first and there are three days of interstate between the old place and the new one. A dog does not need new gear for that. What he needs is the same bowl, the same bed and the same thing handed to him at every stop, so the fourth motel room reads like the first one. Five pieces. Two of them fold flat and one rolls into its own carry bag.
Moving is not a vacation, and a dog can tell
A trip ends with your dog back on his own cushion. A relocation does not. For three or four nights running he sleeps somewhere unfamiliar, eats out of whatever came in the car, and reads your mood off you the whole time. Our article on moving cross country with a dog covers the paperwork, the route and the timing. This page is the shopping list for the car itself, and it sits with every other kit we have built on the Bundle Guides hub.
Skip it if the whole drive is one long day with a hotel at the end. One night does not justify a second bed, and the supply bag is overkill for a duffel's worth of food. Buy the liver and go.
The supply bag, the two bowl sets, the bed and the reward
The Original Doggy Bag is the container for everything that is not the dog. Rubyloo lists it at 15 by 13 by 7 inches with a 25 liter capacity in Oxford fabric, shipping with two BPA free collapsible bowls on carabiners, two leak proof food containers, a built in poop bag dispenser and an adjustable padded shoulder strap. Seven colors, no other decision to make. What puts it ahead of a duffel on a move is those food containers, because dinner gets portioned before you leave and nobody digs through a packed trunk at nine at night hunting for a measuring cup.
The Bernal set is the pair that stays up front. Wildebeest describes it as two ripstop nylon bowls, one for food and one for water, that pop open in seconds and fold flat into a zippered case with a daisy chain, holding up to 8 cups between them. Sky Blue or Black. Yes, the supply bag already carries bowls, and that duplication is the point: one set lives buried in the luggage, one set sits within arm's reach of the driver's seat.
The travel bed is the piece doing the real work here. It is ripstop nylon with reinforced stitching, in Small, Medium and Large, and it rolls into the carry bag it comes with. Rubyloo describes it as water resistant and fur resistant, easy to wipe clean or machine wash. Size it to the bed your dog already sleeps on rather than to your cargo area, since the whole idea is that the surface under him does not change for the length of the move. Skip it if his own bed is riding in the back seat anyway.
Our freeze dried beef liver is what you hand over at every stop. One ingredient, freeze dried in small batches in Malvern, in 1.5, 3 and 6 ounce bags. It is lightweight and non greasy, which is why it lives in a door pocket instead of a cooler, and the pieces come broken small enough to pay a dog several times across one fuel stop without the handout turning into dinner.
The strawberry scented bags are ours too. Leak proof and durable, on an easy tear roll that fits a standard dispenser. Put one roll in the supply bag and a second in the glovebox, because at a rest area the only roll that counts is the one you can reach from the door.
No crate and no restraint in this kit
Every moving checklist opens with a folding crate, and we left it out for two reasons. A crate is sized to the dog and to the vehicle at once, which makes it a measuring job rather than something a kit can pick for you, and a dog who has never been crated will not learn it during a move. The second omission is a harness or barrier. Both are worth owning, both depend on the shape of your car and your dog's chest, and a kit that guessed at either would be worse than no kit.
The first morning and the four after it
Pack the bed last so it comes out first. It goes down on the motel floor before your suitcase does, in a corner away from the door, and it will be the only object in that room he has ever seen.
Portion every meal into the food containers the night before you pull out. Eyeballing a scoop in a parking lot is how a dog ends up eating a guessed amount three days running.
At fuel stops run it in order: water, then the walk, then liver for getting back in the car. Paying him for loading up is the small habit that makes day three easier than day one.
Wipe the bed down at the end of each driving day rather than at the end of the trip. Wet road dust comes off in a minute. Three days of it takes considerably longer and never quite goes.
What owning it replaces
One bag instead of a laundry basket of dog things riding loose in the footwell. Two sets of bowls instead of a takeout container and an apology. A folding bed instead of a folded bath towel, which is what most people improvise and which smells like nothing familiar at all. Treats are the only part you reorder along the way, so if liver is not what your dog works for, the rest of the freeze dried dog treats run one ingredient each and Explore narrows that shelf to a single protein at a time.
Questions we get from people mid move
How long can freeze dried liver sit in a hot car?
Keep the bag sealed and out of direct sun and it rides fine for the length of a move, since freeze dried treats have no refrigeration to lose in the first place. The bag itself says to reseal after opening and store it somewhere cool and dry, which in a loaded car means a door pocket rather than the dashboard.
Do I need the bed if we are staying with family?
More than you would in a hotel, honestly. A spare room with a strange rug and somebody else's dog down the hall is a harder ask than an empty motel room, and a bed he already knows gives him a square of floor that is his.
What size travel bed should I order?
Match it to the bed at home, not to a tape measure on the dog. Rubyloo lists Small, Medium and Large, and a dog who sprawls across a medium in his own living room will curl up tight on a small in a strange one and look miserable doing it.
How it ships
Three of the five pieces come from two different makers, which matters when the moving date is fixed and you are ordering ten days out. The supply bag and the travel bed both come from Rubyloo. Rubyloo items are sold and shipped by Rubyloo through Shopify Collective, not made or shipped by Sniff and Shift. The pop up bowl set comes from Wildebeest. Wildebeest items are sold and shipped by Wildebeest through Shopify Collective, not made or shipped by Sniff and Shift. The liver and the waste bags leave our Malvern kitchen on their own. Order the two Rubyloo pieces first, look through the other road trip kits if any part of your route is winter, and set the bed up in your own living room for a night before it ever goes in the car.
