Our Trip to Boonville

Here's what I packed for myself for our 3-night, 4-day trip to Boonville, CA last week. And actually, only the right pouch is my stuff.


Here's what Tyler packed for himself.



And here's what we packed for the dogs.



And that's really only half of it. I had a list of over 2 dozen things that we had to bring for the dogs, mostly Popeye. First, we have Popeye's "emergency kit" that we keep in the car at all times. A spare wheel for his cart, baby wipes, an extra belly band, spare parts for the cart and tools to change them, an inflator for the tires, and some water.

Since Popeye needs to be manually expressed and I have a bad back, we have our own portable "changing station," which consists of a plastic baby pen and a crate divider.

Then we've got the stroller, which we ended up not using, but it stays in the car wherever Popeye goes just as a precaution. There's also his cart of course, and that white bin is used to elevate his water and food bowl so he doesn't have to bend forward so much.
3 plastic bags of belly bands (40 total), and luckily there's room for the humans' stuff.

But wait, we're not done yet. Lots of extra blankets and towels in case Popeye has some accidents. Also, tons of rugs because we don't know if the flooring at the cottage is going to be too slippery for Popeye to walk on. We brought 13 rugs but next time, we're going to bring more.

Luckily, we were able to borrow a cargo box. Oh, and don't forget the 3 dog beds.

And of course the food. I individually packaged each meal ahead of time.


6 feeding times, 3 dogs--that's 18 individual meals.

Popeye takes a lot of supplements with his meals. I included as many of the supplements as I could with the meals, but some supplements I kept separate because I wasn't sure how they would do frozen with the meat. Rather than bringing every bottle, I packaged all the powder supplements in little ziplocks for each meal.

Of course, there was one supplement that I did mix in with the meat whose capsule shell ended up getting warped. Usually I can bury the capsules in the ground food so that Popeye doesn't notice them. But because the shells were warped, he was better able to pick them out. So every meal ended like this. 36 pills down the drain.

Once we got to the cottage, we immediately set up Popeye's changing station outside.

And we made the inside more dog-friendly.

A sheet over the little spare bed in the corner, dog beds on the floor, elevated water bowl, and a path of rugs. The floor turned out to be textured stone, which Popeye has no problem walking on. But we still put out the rugs to provide some cushioning for the times when he goes nuts and bounces around on the floor.

There's no such thing as packing light when it comes to the dogs. But it was all worth it because the trip went off without a hitch. Popeye tends to always have some little mishap, even at home, whether it be a seroma, a new scrape somewhere on his body, an allergy flare-up (which he actually did have but we managed to control it with meds), or heaven forbid an injured leg, which happened when we took him to the Giants ballgame a couple of months ago. But none of that happened. Nobody got injured or skunked or infested with fleas. I was nervous about the trip but it ended up being a good one.