The Adventure of Dogs,
Cars and Travel

Here are 21 quotes about dogs, cars and travel. If you've ever traveled with your dog, you know it can be an adventure. Or a headache. If your dog loves riding in the car, many of these quotations will have you smiling.

Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.

Dave Barry

Dogs love to go for rides. A dog will happily get into any vehicle going anywhere.

Dave Barry

I called our hotel but the response was "I'm sorry, sir. We've been booked up for months." With sudden inspiration, I called back.... This time I said, "Hello, this is Shana's human..." and this time the response was, "Oh yes, sir. Come on down. We always have a room for you." It really puts you in your place when your dog can get a hotel room, but you can't.

J. Emmett Black, Jr., on how all the staff at a certain Holiday Inn knew his dog by name, but not him. Crime was reduced whenever Shana stayed there; she's a 120 pound Great Dane.

Did you ever notice when you blow in a dog's face he gets mad at you? But when you take him in a car he sticks his head out the window!

Steve Bluestone

Mrs. Campbell once attempted to smuggle her pet Pekingese through customs by tucking him inside the upper part of her cape. "Everything was going splendidly," she later remarked, "until my bosom barked."

Beatrice Stella Campbell

She's getting quite used to jumping into limos.

Sue Chipperton, trainer of Gidget, the Taco Bell commercial star Chihuahua

Like all celebrities, they've got a routine when on the road: first-class seat (always right side, second row, window), a stretch limo waiting, the finest suites and Evian water.

Todd Copilevitz, writing about Nipper and Chipper, the RCA Jack Russell terriers

My Scottie refused to go for a walk with a friend of the house, but she would joyously accompany any stranger who drove a car.

Mazo de la Roche

She never sat down in a car but stood, braced tense, facing the wind. Now and again she would turn her face toward me with an apologetic expression as though to say: "I have not forgotten that you are here but there are certain pleasures I cannot share with you." Her nose never ceased its sensitive quivering.

Mazo de la Roche

The Four Seasons Boston... in the rooms they provide their pet guests with a pet bed, dry food, and water. Also available is a special Pet Menu, which offers such items as grilled chicken and fresh corn for dogs.

Fran Golden

I won't leave Sweden without Ted. The dog is the closest thing in the world to me.

Lars Karlstrand, who turned down a lucrative contract to play for a Scottish soccer team due to the six month quarantine laws in the UK.

Number one way life would be different if dogs ran the world: All motorists must drive with head out window.

David Letterman

There are only two rules. One is from E. M. Forster's guide to Alexandria; the best way to know Alexandria is to wander aimlessly. The second is from the Psalms; grin like a dog and run about through the city.

Jan Morris

When I started driving our old four-door green DeSoto, I always took Skip on my trips around town. I would get Skip to prop himself against the steering wheel, his black head peering out of the windshield, while I crouched out of sight under the dashboard. Slowing the car to ten or fifteen, I would guide the steering wheel with my right hand while Skip, with his paws, kept it steady. As we drove by the Blue Front Café, I could hear one of the men shout: "Look at that ol' dog drivin' a car!"

Willie Morris,
My Dog Skip

Mutt enjoyed traveling by car, but he was an unquiet passenger. He suffered from the delusion, common to dogs and small boys, that when he was looking out the right-hand side, he was probably missing something far more interesting on the left-hand side.

Farley Mowat

I like driving around with my two dogs, especially on the freeways. I make them wear little hats so I can use the car-pool lanes.

Monica Piper

Charley is a mind-reading dog. There have been many trips in his lifetime, and often he has to be left at home. He knows we are going long before the suitcase has come out, and he paces and worries and whines and goes into a state of mild hysteria.

John Steinbeck,
Travels with Charley, about his cross-country adventures with his poodle.

I've always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?

Anne Tyler,
The Accidental Tourist

I've been in the hotel business over thirty years. Never yet have I called the police to eject a disorderly dog during the small hours of the night. Never yet has a dog set the bedclothes afire from smoking a cigarette. I've never found a hotel towel or blanket in a dog's suitcase, nor whiskey rings on the bureau top from a dog's bottle. Sure the dog's welcome. 

P.S. If he'll vouch for you, come along too.

Unknown hotel manager's reply to a vacationer writing to ask if dogs were permitted.

I call the Crown Plaza Hotel and I say, you know, "I need a room. Do you have one?" and they say, "We don't have any rooms." I say, Well OK—I used the Oprah Winfrey thing. Now is the time to pull out the name. 

It's 2:30 in the morning. So I go in and I have my little doggies and the woman says to me, "I'm sorry, we don't take any dogs." By now it's 2:47. I'm in my pajamas with the dogs and I don't have a place to stay in Atlanta. 

So I say, "Well, do these look like dogs to you or do these look like little people with fur?" And she said they looked like dogs to her. So we were escorted out of the Crown Plaza Hotel.

Oprah Winfrey, on her trouble obtaining a hotel room with Solomon and Sophie, her American cocker spaniels. (If you're traveling to Atlanta soon, the hotel has changed its no-dogs policy.)

To a dog, motoring isn't just a way of getting from here to there, it's also a thrill and an adventure. The mere jingle of car keys is enough to send most any dog into a whimpering, tail-wagging frenzy.

Jon Winokur