Why driving with my dogs always makes me think of Dad

Dogs and other pets have to be restrained when going on car rides for their own safety

My father died one week after I got my first puppy. We’ve had family pets before when I was a kid, but this was the first dog I got that I could really call my own. Unfortunately, Pops kicked the bucket before I could introduce him to my doggo friend, whom I named Johnny.

Johnny’s used to car rides, or at least, she should have been. To be completely honest, I got her off the side of the road in Tagaytay (if you’ve ever taken a road trip there recently, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be encouraging roadside dog sales, but that’s another story). I placed her inside a box and took her home with me in my car. She was a trooper: she barely made a squeak the whole ride home to Quezon City.

The next time Johnny rode a car was when we drove up to my father’s wake in Cavite a week later. I put her inside a cage and in the back seat. Poor pup seemed out of it; I think she threw up a couple of times. But she seemed to like hanging out at the chapel, where she was a hit with my cousins and assorted relatives.

Johnny’s next few car rides were short trips to the vet (about 10 minutes from my place in Q.C.) and occasional excursions to places like UP or back to our place in Cavite. In the beginning, she would throw up often so I had to line her cage with newspaper and rags. Eventually she got too big for the cage and she moved up to sit beside me on the passenger seat.

That was until I read that it was dangerous for dogs to sit up front untethered. Just like an infant or a small child, dogs and other pets have to be restrained when going on car rides for their own safety. Or, at the very least, they need to sit in the back. Soon, Johnny also stopped vomiting. She had finally gotten over her car motion sickness.

The author with his dogs Johnnie and Abbie

Fast-forward about a year later and I got my second doggo. Abbie is a three-year-old golden retriever whose previous owner had to leave the country. While Johnny can sometimes be distant and aloof, Abbie is incredibly affectionate and sweet. She loves nudging my hand and forcing me to pet her head or give her a belly rub. While both pups took a while to get to know each other, thankfully, now they’re okay. They’re not exactly the best of friends (and will still occasionally get on each other’s nerves, especially if there’s food involved), but at least they’ve learned to tolerate each other, and at least keep each other company when I’m not there.

I try as much as possible to bring both pups with me on car rides, although with my current schedule, it’s not as often as I’d like. Our last big road trip was to Baler, Aurora, together with a couple of friends. Both pups were generally well behaved throughout the ride. We put them in the back of my friend Arnie’s Ford Escape, but they both kept trying to climb up the seats and sit on our laps. We knew to stop every couple of hours for bathroom breaks, for us, but especially for the dogs.

Abbie loved the beach and the water. She made friends with strangers and relished running around the sand. Johnny was a bit more reserved and chose to just sit in the shade. I think she was afraid of the ocean and other people.

Because my job requires me to travel from time to time, I have no choice but to bring the pups to our home in Cavite where my mom, sister, nephew and niece can take care of them, each time I need to go out of town. It’s always the same routine: at first they’re excited when they see me taking their leashes out and they can’t wait to jump into the car so we can drive off. But eventually, I think they know I’m just dropping them off and have to leave them for days, sometimes weeks at a time. They just look at me with their big sad eyes when it’s time to say goodbye.

It’s during these times when I often wonder how my dad would’ve taken being, well, a dog daddy. Would he have been disinterested and uninvolved, just like how he was with our old pets? Or would he have developed a bond with Johnny and Abbie? Would he have fed them, played with them and given them baths? Or would he have been a grouch and become irritable when they were around?

These thoughts always pop into my head when I drive down to Cavite to visit, with the pups in the back seat, either gazing out the window or taking a nap. Among many other things, one of my biggest regrets is that I never got to go on a road trip with my father and my dogs. I’m pretty sure that would’ve been a blast.