Travels with My Dog Casey: Getting Ready
By Benoit Denizet-Lewis
Have you ever wanted to drop everything (except your dog, of course), jump in your car, and just drive? Yeah, me too.
On Feb. 10th, I will embark on a 15-week RV trip around the country with my 8-year-old Lab mix, Casey, for a book I'm working on about dogs in America. I'll be visiting some 30 states and hundreds of dogs, including sled dogs, show dogs, homeless dogs, therapy dogs, war dogs, hunting dogs, celebrity dogs, sad dogs, funny dogs, and family dogs whose only "job" is loving their two-legged humans. Speaking of humans, I'll be spending time with plenty of them, too—including animal rescuers, pet psychics, dog personality researchers, dog-loving monks, and my former middle-school English teacher who is now a "pet masseuse" in San Francisco.
When I told Cesar Millan about my trip, he asked me to write a weekly blog post from the road. I channeled my calm-submissive energy and said yes. (Thanks Cesar!) I'll also be posting photographs, videos, and ruminations each day on the trip's Facebook page. I hope you'll come along for the ride.
Why did I decide to leave my normal life behind for nearly four months and drive around the country in an RV with my dog? That's a good question, one that became all the more pressing last year when I crashed a U-Haul truck during a move. (If I can't handle a U-Haul, can I really be trusted behind the wheel of a 22-foot RV?).
The nightmares of travel aside, there is also the question of whether my dog even wants to go on a cross-country trip with me. I am not the first person to wonder if my dog is truly happy with me, but I suspect that I am particularly neurotic in this regard. Casey can bring out my insecurities (I sometimes worry that I'm disappointing him, that he might rather live elsewhere), and I wonder what he would say about this trip if he were gifted the power of human speech: "I don't mind a few minutes in the car if you're taking me to the beach, Benoit, but four months in an RV with you? Really?"
Little does Casey know, but this trip is as much about him as it is about the hundreds of other dogs I'll be meeting along the way. Casey will get walked in national parks, pampered at doggie day spas, "communicated with" by the country's most famous pet psychic, cheered for at a dog dock-jumping competition, and sniffed by more cool dogs than he'll know what to do with.
In the end, I hope that these four months on the road with Casey will serve as the ultimate man-dog bonding experience—and help me tell the complete story of dogs in America. What can we learn about this country through our relationship to our dogs? Come along for the ride, and let's find out together.
Benoit Denizet-Lewis is a writer with The New York Times Magazine. Follow his cross-country trip with his dog on Facebook and Twitter.
