dog parks along I-95 between Daytona and South Carolina?

[Karen Klempel]

I'm thinking about taking my dog with me to visit friends in NC.  I live in the Orlando area, so it's going to be a long drive.  She's great in the car but I've never tried such a long trip with her. 

 

I would love to find a couple dog parks along the way on I-95 between Daytona and Florence, SC that we could stop at to release some energy.  Regular rest stops won't work because I don't want to take her off lease to run in such an open area.  Any suggestions?

 

Any other suggestions for a long car trip like this with a dog?  The trip up to NC will just be the two of us.  The trip back from NC, I'll have my daughter with me to help.

 

I'd love to hear your travel suggestions and dog park recommendations.

 

Thanks.

[Amanda and Quinn]

Haven't gotten that far south yet, but I use this site (dogfriendly.com) all the time for traveling with Quinn and find it really helpful. Here's their listing of dog parks divided by state.

http://www.dogfriendly.com/server/travel/guides/dogpark/dogpark.shtml

[Joanne ~ Spud*]

Good sugesstion. I also use www.takefido.com

Have Fun

[Karen Klempel]

Thanks for both of these suggestions. I'm surprised by how few dog parks there are in Georgia and South Carolina. We are fortunate to have many dog parks in Florida, but maybe it goes along with the warmer weather. I found a dog park in Jacksonville and Columbia, SC that might work for us, but nothing else looks close enough to the trip route.

What do others do when they are traveling 8 to 9 hours in a car with a dog? My labradoodle is great in the car, but she'll be about 1 year old at the time of my trip and will need to let out her built up energy.

[Melissa, Samson & Shelby]

Hi! Welcome to the world of long distance travel with dogs! We have come to love it! I have a 2 1/2 and a 1 1/2 yr old doodle. During the summer months we travel about every other weekend 4 hrs each way to TN. At least once or twice a year we head from Cincinnati to SC or FL with the dogs, at least 12 hrs or more (usually more) each way.

When it's travel day, they get a good long walk before they get into the car. We always travel with martingale collars (or no slip collars, some call them) on both dogs. I'm always afraid that a loud nose will startle a dog and they will pull away and slip out of their collars. One of my dogs did that when we were near home. She didn't go anywhere and we slipped the collar back on, but I try to always have martingale collars on when we get into the car and especially when traveling.

Mine don't get alot of exercise while we're on the road. We stop for neccessary potty breaks and take short walks. They seem to treat it like any other day and sleep wonderfully during the drive. Luckily, mine aren't hyper in the car. They do get a nice walk when we get where we're going. We haven't had any trouble with excess energy. They are always just excited to check out a new place and want to walk around and sniff everything.

Have fun! We leave this afternoon headed to TN.

[Karen Klempel]

Thanks for the advise. We use a martingale collar on our doodle all the time. Her head is so narrow, the other collars didn't seem secure enough to stay on.

Do you use some sort of seat belt with your dogs or do they just lay in the back seat?

[Melissa, Samson & Shelby]

I'm a bad doodle parent and don't seat belt them in on long trips. The seatbelts that we have restrict their movements and they can't change position and lay down and be as comfortable. Even though I'm a crazy person about people always wearing seatbelts, maybe if I ever found one that would allow more movement. We typically only use our seatbelts when they ride in our convertible jeep. Ours is a harness type that attaches to the car seatbelt. They can get in one comfortable position, but when they try to shift position or move, they get tangled up and uncomfortable.