Venice

My partner and I have been to Venice, lets say more than a few times. We had some friends over from England, so we thought we would go to Venice…and bring pup along with us.

First things to remember, when taking a big dog anywhere, you have to have a muzzle for them. Which to me is confusing, because isn’t it the smaller dogs that bark all the time and have the nick name ‘ankle biters’? Anyway, every place we go we have his muzzle attached to him or one of our bags. Usually people don’t have an issue with him not wearing it but some public transports you have to muzzle the animals.

Another thing to remember, if you are travelling by trains, which dogs are allowed – you have to have their documents with you; their booklet containing all their vaccinations.

Booklet and muzzle. You are ready to go! Oh and remember you have to buy a train ticket for the dog and validate it – like all train tickets!

Having a big dog out and about you have to expect the interesting looks and questions that you are going to get.

How old is he?

What breed?

What his name?

When we say he is only 8 months, people get more intrigued about him or slowly step back.

First encounter we had was just outside the station, next to the river. It was a man selling clothing items. Drogon – being a dog was sniffing the ground next to the stall. The man start yelling at us, telling us to keep the dog away from all the clothes, his nose is touching everything blah blah blah. For the record, he wasn’t touching anything, so I would recommend just stay about a metre or so away from those stalls.

Venice has a lot of water, and if your dog likes water, I would highly recommend that they don’t go in. Drogon on the other hand snuck in. As we were walking past he walked down the steps so casually and tried to go for a swim. In two places. So that was interesting and yes we got a lot of stares/glares/looks whatever you may want to call it.

One thing that I love about him being big is that he can look over all the bridges and he can be included in all out talks. Drogon for us is a big part of our family – other Doberman owners have their dogs for shows and competition, especially from our breeder.  

Around Italy, you will always find free water fountains, which I find AMAZING and extremely helpful when travelling with all dogs. This saves you carrying around bottles of water to give to your dog, because remember Italy is hot and they need to drink too! We usually just carry a little plastic box that we can fill up for him – sometimes he refuses to drink from the tap because he doesn’t like being splashed with water but he LOVES being in water…

Also remember to bring the dog his food. Drogon is only 8 months so he still eats three times a day so he has to have lunch – this again was carry in a plastic box and he eats straight out of that. 

 One thing we also do when we go out walk with the puppy, is bring a bottle of water/empty bottle (to refill) with us for his pee. He hasn’t yet learnt to cock his leg yet, so he will just stop and pee right where he is. He then leaves just a pool of pee in the middle of the street/path, for us we then pour the water on the floor so it washes away a bit. Just for other people, as it isn’t that nice having a pool of pee just in the middle of St.Marcos square.

When we go to Venice we never have a sit down meal, we also find little take away place on the off streets, this time we went a s fish place – they do battered fish (prawns/calamari/squid) in a cone which was lovely. The place is called: Aqua Mais. Then we went to a pizza place – these aren’t your average pizza slice. They are made from focaccia.

Safe to say that pup wanted some too….

Safe Travels.x