I have a mastiff mix, I take everywhere. He use to ride in the back of my truck on long rides. We brought extra comforters so he did not get too stiff and had axtra padding for those nice long naps. He has a special doggy bowl for water that does not tip over easily - plus I have a huge extra plastic water container for refills. A small fold up cooler for his Natural Balance treats, and a couple of baggies full of dog cookies (biscuits, milk bones, whatever). I stop every 2 to 4 hours to run him, make sure you have leashes and current rabies paper work - the doggie motel might ask as well, one never knows. You might call ahead and ask about three dogs being okay. It has been my experience that there are a couple of concerns most establishments have. They dont want dogs left alone or unattended. When I stop and check in I ask about delivery for dinner, or I find a restauarant with a huge shade tree - if the sun is still up and it is hot. They have a hard time getting dog hair out of things and off the carpet (dont we all) I always tell the cashier that I have clean comforters for the dog to lay down on, that he is never on the bed and is never alone in the room, that seems to help alot - in my experience Motel 6 and Red Roof are good about animals. They dont want your dog barking at night and waking up others. That is about it as far as my experience goes with establishments, I have never really had a problem. Some things you might want to consider. YOur dog gets out and rolls in something horrible. We pack a duffle bag full of old beach towels and fill up some plastic gasoline cans with water so we can rinse the dog if this happens, we also have a little bottle of shampoo for emergencies - there is nothing worse that riding ina car with a stinky dog with an unknown substance on its coat. A sheet also helps if there is an emergency you can cover the area the dog is lying on, and do a wash of the dog and the beach towel and everything else when you get to the motel. This happened to us, out of the car less than a minute and a fresh cow pattie, a dive under a barbed wire fence - I had no idea he could get that small that fast!!! So extra comforters might help with extra dogs. We get ours at Goodwill for about $8 a piece. I make certain a cooler has some of those hard palstic freezie things, you never know if you are going to get stranded somewhere and need to keep cool - blocks of ice, not cubed will last longer as well. Of course lots of plastic bags and some wipes, gotta pick up those touchdowns/meadow muffins or whatever you call them and you never know if someone is going to hurl, a platic bag and wipes can be a blessing. Make certian they have their collars on and ID tags current, and you should have it made. If I have to stop, I make the extra effort to park in the deepest shade I can find, and limit my away from the car time to 15 minutes max - enough time to use the facilities and load up on muchies. Even if you have air conditioning, cars can warm up quickly with 3 pups in there. I hope everything goes without a hitch.

A very thorough response by mazer!

I assume your dogs are used to traveling by car, right? If not, start taking them on little trips about town to get them used to things. If they are prone to carsickness, talk to your vet about some medication options.

I would only add that, if you haven't already done it, have your pets microchipped-- and if they ARE chipped, make sure your contact information is updated, including a cell phone number and secondary contacts. It goes without saying to keep your dogs on a leash at all times, but any number of things can happen in transit... If your dogs happen to be loose and separated from you for some reason, they don't know where they are, who knows what awful things could happen.

When I was a teenager, my parents and I did a cross-country road trip, and in California, we happened to come up on a bad car accident that had just occurred. The driver was unconscious in the vehicle, the passenger was out of the car and somewhat delirious, screaming for their dog-- dog had been in the backseat and took off into the woods after their car was hit and was nowhere to be found. We stayed until the ambulance arrived and then left, so I have no idea how that story ended, but it was horrible to see.

As for finding places to stay, are you a AAA member? A friend of mine recently relocated across the country and drove out with her 2 cats; AAA advised her to call their hotline number when she was close to a stopping point for the night, and AAA would locate for her some choices of pet-friendly hotels and even make the reservation for her. This would probably be better than researching and booking hotels ahead of time, since who knows how far you may get in a day, if unforseen problems (traffic, flat tires, etc.) come up.

Check out TravMatix.com for pet friendly motels. This site will tell you what is located at every interstate exit across the country; motels, gas stations, resturants, rest areas, etc..

We've done a few cross country trips one Oregon to Maine was 2 teens and three dogs and one 10 foot snake, at the end of winter. We kept the teens in seperate cars and walked in tons of rest areas and had lots of those little pocket warmers on hand for the snake. The dogs slept in the back of the trucks at night and watched our 'stuff' the snake was sneaked into our rooms at night in a large duffal bag. What we learned was carry enough water from home, if dogs are stressed sometimes they react harshly to strange water (nothin' like going 70 miles an hour in rush hour traffic and having 2,3 dogs suddenly get the runs!) It was not pretty. Don't be surprised if your dogs don't eat as much as when at home and relaxed. You could probably find a few doggy parks along the way for a few good play times to wear them out. And everyone else has had great reminders too. It wasn't the dogs that gave us the most trouble it was those teen brothers! We did have one horrible morning when we got up and found the trucks empty thankfully the dogs had just gone swimming in one of the great lakes and came really quick when we called. That could have been really bad! We should have had a copy of all their vet records as one was on meds. We still make tons of long trips with our dogs and don't even think twice about 2-3 day road trips.....The teens are grown and gone and it is much easier.

Growing up our dog went everywhere in the car with us on family vacations, so did the hamster and the newts. Of course we were camping with a trailer and not in a motel/hotel. I've crossed the country a couple of times taking along my dog in the car and never had a hotel/motel refuse him into the room. For the most part my dog, an active Border Collie just slept the time away (10hrs driving). No special stops just for him. I wouldn't give it one worry at all if your dog is already a happy driver.

Your dogs and vehicle are bigger than mine. We take ours often on 5 hour trips. One problem we encountered with the dogs riding in the back of the Explorer was that as soon as the hatch was raised the one dog wanted out NOW and I was afraid she would jump before we could leash her. I solved that problem by buying really short (1'?) leads and letting them on their collars. I hooked up a longer leash inside (to a seatbelt) and made sure it was short enough so she could not jump out. When we stopped I opened the side door and reached past the dog barrier and hooked the longer leash to the shorter one. When I opened the back hatch she could not jump out until I had another leash on her. The other dog is too afraid to jump on his own.
I have a canteen for the dogs with a built in water dish - you might need 3.
The biggest problem I see (once you find a place to stay) is that you will have 3 very active pent up dogs that simple walking may not satisfy. At horse supply places there are long lines used to exercise horses called lunge lines. I don't know how you could handle 3 dogs but maybe 2 could be securely tied while the third gets to run. If someone is along with you it will make things easier. Have fun!

Thanks, everybody! I really appreciate the advice!

I know it's been quite a while since I posted, but I was doing a search and this thread came up. I'm the OP, I just changed my name from lagirl to kygirl since I moved cross country. Anyway, the move went great and my dogs enjoyed every minute of it. I wanted to post a little advice in case anyone else ever comes across this thread.

Before we left, I made a list of dog parks in each city we were traveling through. I have one dog that refuses to go to the bathroom on lead. So daily dog parks were a must. We ended up with a very easy routine. We'd get up in the morning, go to the dog park in that city if it had one, run the dogs, and then hit the road. It was also easy each evening when we'd arrive at our motels. We'd immediately feed and water the dogs and then take them out to use the bathroom and then they'd settle in for the night with us.

We also bought a pet barrier for the back of my Expedition so that they couldn't get to the front seats.

Please be forewarned though, that dogs, even well-behaved, will jump out at the worst times. Our sweet, overweight golden who is lazy and the least athletic of our dogs, went nuts at a dog park after we'd packed him back into the Expedition. I had the back window open, getting something out of the cooler, and I didn't think any of the dogs would even consider trying to go out that way because they'd have had to crawl over six feet of luggage and boxes to get there and, there was only about one foot of clearance between the top of the boxes and the top of the window. Nevertheless, a woman pulled up and let out her two little Italian greyhounds and they were off leash. My big boy went nutso and did his Superman imitation and dived out the back window of the Expedition, five feet off the ground! He was determined to meet those hot little greyhounds!

Everything was fine, we grabbed his leash (we did keep their leashes on at all times) and the woman grabbed her dogs, but it could have been awful if any of them had tried to run.

And then there was the Grand Junction, Colorado dog park that had a small lake in the center. Our boys had to run that day and it was the only dog park that we'd seen since Utah was non-dog friendly. We thought maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't notice the lake. Yeah, right...they're golden retrievers, after all! They love water. They immediately dove into the lake and swam around, with us yelling at them, and then we had to dry them off and drive the rest of the day with three smelly, wet (but happy) dogs. It was something else!

If you can go an extra 166 miles a day, you can save a whole day. That's not too bad, maybe an extra couple of hours.

we did the 500 miles daily and it was just right for our trip. we started each day around 7 a.m. and by the time we'd finished our dog park visits, at 8 a.m., and hit the road, and then taking into account the dog bathroom breaks along the way, we wouldn't get to our hotels until about 7 p.m. each night. So that was definitely a full day for us. Maybe some people are tougher, but we were tired after 11 hours on the road and we liked to be settled into our hotel and have our dogs settled in the room and finished with bathroom breaks before dark since we didn't know the areas we were in.