Hotel Check In With a Dog: The Room Kit
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You are standing in a hallway on the third floor with a key card, two bags and a dog who has never smelled this carpet before. The ten minutes after that door opens set the tone for the night. Four things make those ten minutes go your way: a bed he recognizes, something sticky to work at, water in a bowl that is his, and bags for the strip of grass by the parking lot.
The room is the problem, not the drive
Most people plan the route and forget the arrival. A dog who rode four hours without a complaint will pace a hotel room for an hour, because there is nothing in it that belongs to him and every sound in the hallway is new. Our guide to hotel check in with a dog covers the etiquette side, the deposits and the do not disturb sign. This kit is the part you unpack, and the rest of what we have put together lives on the Bundle Guides hub.
You can skip it if your dog already travels in a crate that goes into the room with him. That crate is doing this kit's whole job, and better. Buy treats instead.
A bed, a mat, a bowl and a roll of bags
The Rubyloo travel bed is the anchor. Ripstop nylon with reinforced stitching, offered in Small, Medium and Large, and it rolls into its own carry bag so it rides in a suitcase rather than taking the whole trunk. Rubyloo describes it as water resistant and fur resistant, easy to wipe clean or machine wash, which is what makes it reusable on a stay where the dog comes in wet from a nine at night walk. Put it down first, before the suitcase and before the coat, in a corner where nobody will step over him.
The Camp eMat is the one that buys you time. It is TPE, roughly 8 by 8 inches, printed with a retro van design, and its suction cups grip tile, glass or a vehicle window. SodaPup describes it as one of the best suction cup lick mats for active dogs, made in the USA, and lists orange and green. In a hotel that means the bathroom floor: press it down, spread peanut butter or wet food into the pattern, and you have bought yourself the trip back down to the car. Freeze it in the ice bucket beforehand and the session runs longer. SodaPup says to supervise and to size up for strong chewers, so this is not the mat to walk away from with a dog who eats rubber.
The Bernal set handles water. 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, holding 8 cups between them. Sky Blue or Black. The reason it is here rather than a rigid bowl is the ice bucket problem: without a bowl of his own, the dog drinks out of whatever the room provides, and the room provides a plastic bucket that lives next to the coffee maker.
The strawberry scented bags are ours, leak proof, on an easy tear roll. Hotel grounds belong to somebody else and get walked by somebody else in the morning, so the roll goes in your pocket on the way out of the room, not in the car. Our freeze dried treats are worth a mention here too, since a single ingredient piece crumbled with a little water spreads onto the eMat and gives you something to load it with that is not a jar of peanut butter in a suitcase.
What we left out of a hotel kit
No portable white noise machine. They turn up on every hotel packing list for dogs and they are fine, but a phone already does that job and you are not short of outlets. We also left out a second collapsible crate. A crate is either already part of how your dog travels or it is a thing you are introducing in a strange room at ten at night. The second of those goes badly often enough that we would rather not sell it as an easy answer.
The first hour, in order
Bed down, then mat up, then bowl filled. Do all three before you make a second trip to the car, because the second trip is when a dog left standing in the middle of an empty room decides the door is the interesting part of the room.
Walk him before you unpack anything else. A dog who has emptied out will settle on the bed. A dog who has not will stand by the door no matter what is on the mat.
Peel the eMat off the tile before you go to sleep. Housekeeping finding it stuck to a bathroom floor is a small thing that turns into a note on your reservation.
Roll the bed with the used side in and wipe it when you get home, not in the room. You will not do a good job at checkout with a checkout time bearing down on you.
What owning it replaces
A folded bath towel from the bathroom rack, which is what everybody uses and which the hotel counts. The ice bucket, obviously. And an hour of standing in the room trying to convince a dog to lie down on a floor he has decided is not for lying on. Peanut butter is not the only thing that goes into a mat, and Explore will narrow our shelf by format if you would rather pack something dry that crumbles.
Questions about overnight stays
Will the lick mat stick to a hotel bathroom floor?
SodaPup lists tile, glass and vehicle windows as the surfaces the cups are made for, so a smooth bathroom floor is the first place to try. Press an empty mat down and pull on it before you spread anything into it. The side of the tub is the fallback.
My dog barks when I leave the room. Does this fix that?
No, and nothing you buy will. A lick mat occupies a dog for the length of a lick mat, which is minutes, not the length of a dinner downstairs. Treat it as cover for unloading the car, not as a way to leave him alone.
Do I really need a separate bed if he sleeps on our bed at home?
Take it anyway. A hotel duvet is somebody else's laundry and most dogs are on it within ten seconds of the door closing, which is exactly when you want a better offer available on the floor.
How it ships
Three makers, three separate boxes, which is worth knowing if the trip is this weekend. Rubyloo items are sold and shipped by Rubyloo through Shopify Collective, not made or shipped by Sniff and Shift. SodaPup/True Dogs, LLC items are sold and shipped by SodaPup/True Dogs, LLC through Shopify Collective, not made or shipped by Sniff and Shift. Wildebeest items are sold and shipped by Wildebeest through Shopify Collective, not made or shipped by Sniff and Shift. The bags and any treats come out of Malvern on their own. Order with a week of slack, and if more of your driving is overnight than local, the other road trip kits cover the rest. Unroll the bed at home once so it is not stiff and folded the first time it hits a hotel floor.
