It's that time of the year again where we make the arduous trek back to our hometown to visit our families. We only get to see our siblings, parents and other loving family members every half year or so because travelling is so expensive.  While I am looking forward to visiting everyone, I am absolutely dreading the trip itself. We are bringing Bella along with us because we are planning on staying nearly two weeks at my in-laws (pray that I make it). Placing her in a kennel would be traumatising for Bella since she has severe separation anxiety and we do not want to trouble mates for such an extended amount of time. This means that we have to pack our car with our luggage and dog and drive the entire twenty hours back home. Our trusty vehicle has been used and abused over the years.

We've made this trip several times now and know exactly how to make it through smoothly. Numerous audiobooks on the iPod sedate the humans during the trip while rawhides and water breaks are enough for Bella. Although Bella has countless bad traits, we are extremely grateful that she is such a good sport in the car. She never whines in the car and is perfectly content sleeping through the entire trip. I was really nervous about our first extended car ride with her because she refused to have a wee at any rest stops and I feared that she would go in the backseat. Eventually, we realised that her anxiousness at a new place prevented her from even thinking about using the loo so we gave up on trying to take her out the next few trips. The humans needed to stop more often than the dog. Lucky us!