River's First Road Trip

I've always had dogs that love riding in cars. 

 River is the first dog I've had since I stopped owning cars. I'd love to take him on road trips with me, but first I need to find out how he’s going to do in the car. 

I have taken him for one ride, about six months ago. It was in the back of an SUV with no windows and he was in his crate and he got sick in the car. Oops. (I’ve since learned that I did it all wrong.)

So now I’ve rented a sedan for our road trip. I wanted to do some acclimatizing to the car so we went through a series of introductions:

first test: sitting in the car, he was fine

second: starting the car, fine

third: backing up and rolling back into place, all fine

then we took a break.

We went back inside and I put on the leash and harness. (Well, I put it on him haha) Then, 

back out to the car for more steps: sitting, fine; starting, fine; backing up, fine. So, we drive half way around the block and park on the street, and he’s fine. We get out, play in the grass, get back in the car, fine. I start it up, roll it forward and back a few times. Get out, get back in. He’s totally fine.

So then we get out and walk home to take another break. About twenty minutes later, we go out again and he seems happy when he spots our car, he runs up to it, hits it with his nose and hangs out by it. 

So I let him in, we do all the same things and he's fine. We drive all the way around the block and park again, get out and walk home. And he’s good with it all. Then we took a long break, and he took a nap.

Later, we all three go out to the car; River, Zeke and I. We go through all the steps, but this time, River gets the back seat and Zeke in the passenger seat where River had previously sat. But River settles into his seat and even seems comfortable with the seat belt strap on him.

Everything seems good, so we drive around three blocks and pull into our garage and park. Toward the end, I noticed he had started drooling slightly. We get out of the car and, in the garage, I run him around the car a few times ... thinking he needed to shake it off. 

But basically, he was showing no signs of distress other than a little hesitant and a little drool. He was fine.

So, we go inside, take off the leash. He drinks some water, and then comes over and stands next to where I'm sitting. I pull him up to sit on my lap like we do every day ... and that's when it happened...

he lost his lunch on the hallway floor.

He never seemed overly distressed. In fact, it seemed that the thing that bothered him the most was the fact that he threw up. Afterwards, it almost seemed like he was worried about how we were going to react. But we were cool about it. 

Well, now he’s resting again. 

Tomorrow we have a reservation in a hotel in Friday Harbor, which is a good two hours driving and then getting on a ferry. We have no idea what this trip holds, but then, that’s the joy of the road trip, isn’t it?  

We're in for an adventure. 

River
So far, a landlubber.