Best Websites for Planning a Dog Friendly Vacation
I rarely travel without my Dachshunds Summit and Gretel.
I’ve taken them on a 4,000 mile road trip from Seattle, Washington to Phoenix, Arizona.
I took them on a “tour” along the west coast in April 2022, driving over 3,000 miles and holding several Dachshund meetups along the way.
UPDTATED: Article originally published August 2014.
I drove to Colorado with them to climb the highest 14er in the state – Mt. Elbert.
I flew to New York City with my Dachshund Gretel twice.
Needless to say, I travel a lot with my dogs, which means I’ve also spend thousands of hours online planning our dog friendly vacations.
I thought I would share some of my favorite resources I use to plan our dog friendly travel itineraries.
I use these resource regularly to search for dog friendly hotels, dog friendly campgrounds, dog friendly restaurants; and dog friendly trails.
Planning a Dog Friendly Road Trip
When planning a dog friendly road trip, the first thing I do is use Google Maps to calculate driving times and find approximate stopping points.
For example, I only want to drive 8 hours the first day, because that is be about 11 total hours on the road with breaks, I keep picking destinations along our route and plugging them into the map until I find one that is about 12 hours from Seattle.
I keep doing this until I’ve estimated all of the stops between our start and finish destinations.
I like to choose my own stop locations and frequency, so I look along the chosen route for dog friendly campgrounds, fun things to see, and places to visit (like National Parks I can enjoy with my dog).
I may adjust my previously determined stops based on stops I want to make along the way and how long I want to spend at these stops.
Finding Dog Friendly Hotels
If I want to stay in hotels when we travel, there are several ways that I find them.
The PetsWelcome dog road trip planner is helpful when looking for dog friendly hotels along a driving route
The road trip planner is Google map based so it looks and feels familiar to most people.
You can enter your starting destination, final destination, and set your search parameters for hotels (distance from your route and distance apart along the route).
If I am not driving and merely want to see hotels near our final destination, or I want to see additional choices not returned by the PetsWelcome trip planner, I use the Bring Fido Website.
It’s like Expedia for dog friendly hotels.
You can view all dog friendly hotels in a city as well as estimated rates, descriptions, reviews, and usually pet policy information.
You can book a hotel, and a competitive rate, right on the site.
This is, by far, the most comprehensive, easy-to-use website I have used for locating and booking dog friendly hotels.
Finding Dog Friendly Restaurants
I like to search the Go Pet Friendly Destination Guides first when looking for places I can eat with my dog.
The destination guides are like personal reviews on a specific location.
I like seeing the pictures and hearing the stories from actual humans instead of marketing mumbo-jumbo off of a website.
Whether I find a destination guide for the city I am visiting or not, the next places I look are the Go Pet Friendly travel search and the Bring Fido dog friendly city directory.
Between those two resources I usually find all of the dog friendly restaurants in an area.
Sometimes I will do a little extra checking for restaurants on Dog Friendly.com.
Finding Dog Friendly Trails
While Bring Fido lists some dog friendly trails on their website, I find their listing sorely lacking.
Specifically, they primarily only list park and “tourist” trails.
That is enough for some people but we like to get far out into nature and see some of the best natural sights the area has to offer.
If I am looking for dog friendly trails in Washington State where I live, I use the Washington Trails Association hike finder and filter for dog allowed (under trail feature and ratings).
Read: How to Find Off-Leash Dog Trails in Washington
If I’m traveling out of the state, I use AllTrails and filter by dog friendly (under suitability).
Honorable Mentions
I primarily travel with my dogs in the US and road trips are my favorite mode of transportation.
The websites above meet all of my research needs.
However, there are a few other websites worth mentioning.
- DogJaunt – for information about flying with a dog in cabin and visiting Seattle with your dog (that’s where she is from).
- Travelnuity – She has travelled to many locations around the world with her Dachshund
- Boogie the Pug – she has some information about traveling with your small dog to the north east coat and South America.
Personally, I have written articles specific to:
- How to Enjoy National Parks with your dog while following the rules
- Visiting Death Valley with your dog
- Visiting Seaside, Oregon with your dog
- Visiting Long Beach, Washington with your dog
- Visiting Port Townsend, Washington with your dog
Final Thoughts
I love taking my dogs on vacation with me so I am constantly researching where to visit, stay, and play with my dogs.
I’ve listed my favorite to-to websites for planning my dog friendly travel in this article.
Whether you are looking for a dog road trip planner, a dog friendly restaurant, or a dog friendly place to lay your heads at night, you’ll want to bookmark this article for future reference.
See Also: Driving to Canada from the Us
If you are going to be flying with your dog, check out the 9 Lessons I Learned While Flying with a Dog In Cabin.
About the Author
Hi, I’m Jessica. I’m a Dachshund sitter, President of the largest social Dachshund club in Washington State, a dog trainer in training, and I’ve been a Dachshund owner for 20 years. I have over 150,000 hours of experience with the breed. When I’m not working, you can find me hiking, camping, and traveling with my adventurous wiener dogs.
Thanks so much for including us in your travel plans, Jessica! We hope you all have a great time in Jackson next week. Waggin’ trails!
It is a wonderful article and thanks for sharing the website of hotels and restaurants that are dogs friendly. Most of hotels and restaurants don’t allow to take dogs with us, so it creates many pet problems for every pet owner. I think your provided sites will help them.
There are SO many dog friendly hotels now. I havent foumd one City we have traveled too that didn’t at least have one of them. Restaurants are another story but I am happy to see they are on the rise too. Most only let you sit oitside on the patio (taking them inside is against the health code but some places have been able to get around it) so they only work in nice weather.
We are planning a trip w/ our Rita this year, so this is timely! I downloaded the Bring Fido app at my sis’s recommendation to find pet friendly dining options while we on our trip. Haven’t actually used it yet, but my sis said it’s helpful. I also have an old-fashioned paperback book (The Dog Love’s Companion to the Pacific Northwest) that we’ll be bringing along. Looks like it has good dining and hiking info.
Great advice, we didn’t know the pet friendly restaurants one, thanks! Love Dolly
Definitely some sites here that I haven’t taken advantage of. I use Sidewalkdog.com a lot here as it is a guide for Twin Cities to find everything and anything dog-friendly. Have fun on your trip! We just made the road trip out that way to Colorado!
I’ve never heard of that site. Thanks for sharing. Am I correct that it is only for the Twin Cities area?
Yep, SidewalkDog.com is only for the Twin Cities area. 🙂
Great information. I am always looking for pet friendly hotels.
Great tips! We’re heading to Nashville, TN for the first time tomorrow. We’ll have to check out those sites. Wish us luck in our travels! Much love, The Scottie Mom.
What a great bunch of websites. I have bookmarked a lot of them which I can use Europe too. I didn’t know these sites existed. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for this great and informative post!
This is great information. I’m going to go read your post on finding pet friendly trails to see what I can find here in Iowa where we just moved. 🙂
Great. I am pretty sure you will find something. If you do a search and find another online resource or finding dog friendly trails, would you please come back and post it here?
This is so cool! Very helpful and informative! Thank you for sharing! Cant wait to plan our next vacation! Im sure my dog would really love it! 🙂
We’ve discovered that the La Quinta chain lives up to their dog-friendliness policy. We took Thumper with us all up and down CA this summer and not one employee at any La Quinta batted an eyelash. In fact, he got lots of love and pets from people who missed their own dogs.
We recently stayed at one and found the staff to be very nice. Their pet policy did seem to be a tad more restrictive than others but it did not interfere with our enjoyment.
This is a really helpful post! We use Go Pet Friendly and Bringfido too, we also love the AAA Pet Book with lots of pet friendly lodgings that are registered w/ AAA. Your AAA card can often get you a 5 or 10% discount on lodging as well. I’ve been stuck without a dog friendly place to stay more than once and all 3 of these have been helpful. Sharing.
Love & Biscuits,
Dogs Luv Us and We Luv Them
Thanks for mentioning AAA. I always ask if a hotel has an AAA discount but never thought of using them as a dog-friendly resource. Maybe it’s because it reminds me too much of AARP but I always felt like their resources were a bit outdated or not up on current trends. Ha, ha. It’ been years and years since I’ve checked them out though.
Hello there, Great post! I have travelled all over the country and out of the US too, many times with 2-3 dogs and a parrot and have utilized a few of your links in the past. I can’t wait to try the finding dog friendly trails link and the pet friendly restaurants link. I am going to use the trail link for the New York City area first!
Thanks for writing such a helpful article!
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