It’s a question I often ask myself, does my greyhound actually like my campervan? Well I guess the true answer is yes and no. It took her a while to get used to it, I had to train her even to be able to jump up onto the bed via the seat. Once she made it up there she was happy and it was soon decided she would be sleeping up there, not in her own bedroom under the bed! And it was a nice bedroom, custom fit mattress, blankets, but hey what can you do. In the winter it was so cold I really didn’t think it fair to try and make her sleep down there, to be honest we both needed the shared bodily warmth!
So she is happy sleeping on the bed, she’s very good overnight and generally has no interest in getting up in the morning. She’s happy to sleep on the bed during the day to if we are working or hanging out in the van. We watch movies, or read, or work on the bed together sometimes. She’s definitely got to know that that is her bedroom, and is always keen to get up on the bed.
The bad side is that she hate driving in the van. Hmm how does that work I hear you ask, it’s a campervan! Well the answer is not very well. I had hoped she would get used to it, but she seems to hates it almost as much as she ever did. She doesn’t like to get up onto her driving seat and when she does she starts panting heavily immediately. She can’t sleep at all so she just lies there, sometimes tries to get up, finds it very hard to get comfortable. She also shakes, even before we have started driving. To be honest it breaks my heart, which means I have really limited the amount of driving that we do. I didn’t want to be permanently travelling anyway, I knew I’d want to find places I liked and stay there a while or it just becomes to exhausting. But even with that we do a lot less driving than I had planned. Places I really want to visit in the UK like Scotland and the Lake District seem extremely far away and almost unreachable! Which definitely isn’t how I hoped things would be. But I feel so bad for making her do something she doesn’t enjoy. Now I’m trying to keep daily journeys short in the hope she will come round.
I think she missed home more than I thought she would. I’m not sure she does see the van as home persay, more like home until she goes round someone’s house! I never though about it before I got the van but perhaps it makes sense that a dog who was brought up in a kennel wouldn’t be very happy to spend all her time in what is essentially a metal box! I know she loves being at friends and family’s house and being able to wander round and sleep in different places.
Although she does love visiting new places for walks, I think because she finds the journeys stressful she doesn’t enjoy it as much as she should, or at least it takes quite a while for her to relax. She also misses my family as we have spent a lot of time around them.
Do I regret getting the van? No I don’t but I do regret not taking Nancy out in some vans first to see how she felt about it. I wonder if she has trauma related to the lorry they would have been driven to races in and perhaps the noise of the van brings her back to that. It is certainly a much more noisy vehicle than a car.
Would she prefer a different van? This is what I now ask myself, wondering if I should sell big van and get a different one, a smaller car based van that she might like driving in more. Of course that would be a lot less suitable for full time living. So many questions!
I actually also have a car, a Skoda Yeti, and I am thinking about converting this into a car camper for some overnight trips to see how she feels about that. No doubt she will think I am absolutely nuts! Why are we sleeping in the car mom?! But I think it could be really fun to do short trips in and I am really into the idea of more outdoor stuff, wild camping in a tent, longer hikes, cooking etc. Not sure how Nancy Drew will feel about any of this…..
Anyhow so back to the van- we have highs and we have lows. I still struggle with it as her anxiety make me anxious too! But I am so glad to be able to take advantage of what we have at the moment. We’ve spent lots of time visiting friends and family, and being able to live in the van outside instead of bothering them for rooms etc is so much more relaxing and free. I am planning to try and soundproof the cab of the van to see if this will help at all with the noise and Miss Nancy’s happiness! I know lots of people have dogs that love driving in their cars and vans, so I’ve learnt one thing it’s that it would be sensible to take you dog out first in the vehicle you are thinking of buying/living and see if they like it before committing to it.
If you have any experience of this with you dog, leave a comment, I’d love to hear any ideas about how to improve things for Miss Nancy!