Embark on a Great Adventure
If you’re passionate about your pooches and want to share your travels with them, you’re at the right place. At GoTravelDog.com, we share our tips on how to travel with pets so everyone has a great time.
GoTravelDog.com links people who love to travel with their pets to the very best pet-friendly hotels and dog friendly vacation rentals, as well as destinations and pet-related events.
GoTravelDog.com also serves as a portal for locating pet supply stores, veterinary and emergency clinics, and daycare and boarding facilities nationwide.
And all approved by GoTravelDog.com's trusted “pack” of travel dog aficionados. GoTravelDog.com offers valuable safety tips for optimizing travel with pets, all lovingly and painstakingly researched (and road tested) by founder, Michelle Michael – and her dogs!
Meet Founder, Michelle Michael
Michelle was driving from Ohio to Utah in the Spring of 2006 when she first had the idea for GoTravelDog.com. She was traveling with three of her beloved dogs and found it a bit challenging to locate pet-friendly hotels along the way. After a very long day on the road and after many phone calls to hotels that were advertised on billboards alongside the highway, she finally landed in a delightful dog-friendly hotel near Cheyenne, Wyoming.
On this night, GoTravelDog.com was conceived as Michelle began drawing plans to build a website for folks who travel with pets.
Michelle soon realized that the seed was planted for GoTravelDog.com long before this fated trip out west. In the late 1990s, Michelle rescued a three-year old, 17-pound wirehaired dachshund named Snuggles. Even after months of rehabilitation, Snuggles still experienced such separation anxiety that he stopped eating when she would leave on a trip. The solution? Take Snuggles along. Travel with pets involves a bit of research and pre-planning. In the years to come, Snuggles and Michelle learned the finer points of air travel with dogs, discovered the best dog hotels across the U.S. and Canada, and hiked and played in the most dog-friendly parks and beaches across North America.
Their travels took them to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Central Park in NYC, the Stock Yards in Forth Worth, and to Navy Pier in Chicago, to name a few. If only dogs could rack up frequent flyer miles! The years Michelle spent traveling with Snuggles helped her gather a wealth of knowledge, including the importance of safety when it comes to traveling with dogs. She sought out pet supply stores along the way, researched the best veterinarian and emergency clinics, and got to know the highest-rated daycare and boarding facilities in North America. Michelle is a walking, talking database of all things related to traveling with pets.
In 2004, after Snuggles journeyed to the rainbow bridge, Michelle took to the road with her Rhodesian Ridgebacks. By car, she has traveled from New York to California, Maine to Miami, and about everywhere in between. And on these journeys, another piece of the Travel Dog mission crystallized for Michelle — helping to connect rescue dogs with their forever families. This mission will be realized through the Travel Dog Network Rescue Program. So, what began as a solution for her own rescue dog's special needs in the 1990s has turned into a full-time passion, purpose and profession for Michelle. GoTravelDog.com is THE place for pets who travel with their people. Because, after all, home is where your hound is.