How to train your dog to ride / Motorcycle dog travel tips

Good morning. It is 4 30 in the morning. I am loading up getting ready to head to San Antonio Cowboy Harley-Davidson. They call it Alamo City. It should be a good ride today. We're going to try to beat most of the sunlight and knock down some of this heat. It's still like 100 degrees in San Antonio today. It's supposed to be like 96. We're going to try to beat that heat. I'm happy to have Scooter back on the road with me. Matter of fact let's go grab him right now. Where you want to come with? All right come on let's go. You ready to ride buddy? Today along the journeys I am just going to share with you all my tricks that I use to ride cross country with adults. So I'll give you tips from the training all the way down to the heat to the cold. Things that I've seen. The things I like. The things I don't like. Exactly what I'll carry. Keep that little guy happy while we're traveling the road. I'm going to grab a few more supplies and we're going to hit the road. Scooter are you ready to ride? You ready to ride boy? Huh? Are you ready to ride? Okay let's go. Okay get up there. Atta boy. Atta boy. Go ahead. Get in. Get in your bag. Get in. All right good boy. Are you ready to ride? Okay let's do it. All right one of the things to know is he is tethered. You see that? That goes right in his collar and he's tethered to that bike so he will not be able to jump out. He can get his head up and look around but he cannot jump out. So it's nice. He can sit like this and look around and he's got full protection from the windshield but if he wants to get his nose up in the air he can get it up above this and look around as well. Works out pretty good. You know you just gotta adjust that tether to the right length. I will tell you one thing before we even get started. Eye protection. He's behind me. He's behind that windshield. He's behind this luggage and he's behind this his own windshield. The vet told me that small dogs have very active glands for watering their eyes and the long trips we do those goggles pressing on his eyes is actually dangerous to damaging his tear ducts. This actually could do more damage for him to wear those goggles on a day like today where we'll be on the road for more than six hours. Short rides they're cool and everybody looks good and they do offer some protection for the eyes. On a long ride it's actually more risky to run the goggles which is why we made him this custom windshield and all this is a windshield off of a sportster. Drilled four holes in the front of his pet palace and bolted it right to his pet palace. That's all there is to it. Pretty simple really. This little guy absolutely loves it. We're gonna get out of here and ride huh partner? What's up Roo buddy? Alright we're gonna hit the road. Scooter's ready. I'm ready. Let's rock. Alright so we are at our first gas stop here. We're gonna fill up before we hit the road. I figure we'll start from the beginning. So when it comes to training your dog to ride, what I did with Scooter is I started him very very young only a couple months old and he started out riding on a girlfriend. She'd ride on the back and he'd ride in a bag kind of she'd wear across her chest that would sit on her side which was pretty good but then when I became single I had to find a new way to ride him and that's when I found this Grand Pet Palace. So Scooter was used to the motorcycle from a young age but if your dog is not and you're trying to train him Grand Pet Palace is really great because when it comes off the bike this here actually opens up and you can actually use it as a dog house. You can open that up. You can just set it in your living room and have him get used to the bag as a dog house. Treats in there. Have him go in there at night. Leave him in there for periods of time. Take him out. Tether him to it. Get him used to using it up and down. Even hook a leash to it and use it at a park so he gets used to going in and out. This bag is really great for training a dog on how to get comfortable making it his own space. Blankets and stuff with his scent on it in there is definitely going to help and that is really what I recommend for getting them trained to getting used to the bike. Let me tell you what I don't recommend. What I don't recommend are those belly pouches. I've seen several cases where a woman would be in the back wearing a belly pouch with a dog in it and the man would be up front. He'd have to slam on his brakes fast. That dog can get squished between you. Small dog like that. Sorry let me turn this down. Small dog like that. Very easy to squish. So putting a dog in a belly pouch between two people I think is a bad idea. Like I said I have heard of a situation where it ended up costing the dog his life and I don't know. I couldn't live with that. So this as it says is Scooter's backpack. Another good tip is make it enjoyable for him. I keep in this pouch right here his treat so he knows that when we ride he gets treats. It makes it enjoyable for him. Look at him lick his lip. Discipline is key though. Leave it. Okay. Good boy. He's a good dog. He listens to us. Consistency. Number two of the trip and we are going to talk bathroom breaks. So about every 150 miles or so I stop to get fuel. When I do that is when I let Scooter out. So you're looking at about two hours in between bathroom breaks for him. Which is much less than the average dog in a house while you're at work. Okay now that we've had our restroom break it's time for some breakfast. One of the good things about this Kuriokan Pet Palace which is the carrier we have comes with food dishes. It is actually two dishes in one. So one for food one for water. We'll start out with a bit of water for him. He'll drink that and while he's drinking that I'm gonna get him a little breakfast going. The nice thing about Scooter is he's so small he doesn't eat much. One little handful of food will go a long way for him. So he's got water and food. I'm gonna go inside and use the restroom myself while I do. I'd like to show you where Scooter likes to hang out. So this is kind of our pack. Everything fits real good. He's got the shakes now from drinking that cold water. I'm telling you I use the Yeti. Never believed in the Yeti but this thing keeps the water so cold. It's absolutely perfect for Scooter especially when we're running through hot areas like Texas, Arizona, New Mexico things like that. This is the pack that we use. It keeps everything pretty tight and Scooter likes to just hang out right on top of this pack and kind of keep a look on the bike while I'm inside the store. And that brings me to a good point. When it comes to dogs, especially small dogs around the road, people are always going to want to touch them. If it's a big dog they'll usually ask permission first if they're a little bit scary, fickle or something. But when it's a little dog people aren't scared. They're not nervous and they don't hesitate to just stick their hand right in the bag or the backpack or the dog. And when they're a little dog like that, that can be kind of scary. So I ask people not to touch Scooter while he's on the bike. One because he's trained to make sure that none of my stuff goes walking off while I'm in this gas station. So it's important when we got big old hands and he's just a little bitty guy to just be soft with them and gentle with them and make sure that they're comfortable. And that's something that I would suggest. I used to let people hold him and carry him and just touch him whenever he wanted but it got to be too much for him. And then we had a lady actually drop him by accident and he landed on his head on the concrete and it was really a bad situation for him. And ever since then it's been pretty much no holding Scooter and only pet him one hand while he's down on the ground and let him come to you. So I'm going to talk to you about something else with Scooter. Scooter's got a issue with his nose that is something that happens a lot in bulldogs and smaller dogs as they get older. He's nine years old now. He's been over 150,000 miles on a motorcycle. But his nose has growths on it. It's just skin growing and it's completely natural. They got a disease name for it. I don't really know. It's a long name. It doesn't hurt him. It doesn't bother him. It looks like it's chapped or something like that. But really it's just a skin growth. But I did get this stuff from Petco that I like to put on him. And it's just to protect. A little extra moisture on it. It doesn't fix it. It's never going to fix it. But I think it just helps a little bit. So I try to do this about twice a day. I know you don't like this at all. But I think it helps some. A little moisture in there because with this disease it does rob his nose of some moisture. I give him a little nose lube there a couple times a day. He does all right with it I guess. All right. Now we're ready for the road. You ready to ride some more? You ready to ride? Okay. Let's ride. All right. We have made a little stop at Best Buy. We need to get some supplies for filming the big giveaway we're going to do this weekend where we honor a vet with a new 2017 Harley-Davidson. So I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to talk to you about taking your dog with you outside of your motorcycle. So what I have is I have this bag here. It's Scooter's Bag. It is a 5.11 Tactical. Okay. I used to use the Moab 10. This is the 24 backpack. So in here I keep a few different supplies. A leash, headlamp, his nose cream in here that I showed you earlier. If you have this backpack you won't have your dishes. So you need a collapsible water bowl. Something you can carry. They double as food dishes and water dishes. They just go out. You can stick it in a pocket. You can stick it in a backpack. It works absolutely perfect. He digs it. If you're looking for these things because they're super handy to have you can get them right on my website. It's AdamSandovalRides.com. Go to shopping and you will find collapsible water dishes right there. So now when it comes to using the backpack I just open it up like this. Okay come on buddy. Let's go. And he'll just crawl right in. He'll turn around. Have a kiss. Thank you buddy. And now we're ready to go. All right it is hot. We beat most of the heat. We finally got to our hotel here. We arrived at Alamo City Harley-Davidson where we're going to be doing the mission thank you tomorrow and honoring our veterans. Thank you so much for joining along on the ride today. If you enjoyed anything today please give us that thumbs up and if you got any questions about the animals just go ahead and leave me a question down there in a comment and I'll try to get through as many of them as I possibly can. Until the next vlog thank you all very much. Keep dreaming till your dreams come true.