Driving with dogs – Leonberger Life

Esther’s writing prompt: February 11 : Drive

A photo of a Leonberger puppy wearing a red scarf. — This is a photo of our Leonberger Bronco when he was three months old.

Our Leonberger dog is standing on a red leather sofa, and he is leaning over to give me a hug. — Bronco our Leonberger dog was a very affectionate dog.

On the left is our yellow Labrador Baylor and on the right is our brown and black German Shepherd. They are both lying down and looking into the camera. — Our Labrador Baylor and our German Shepherd Baby. Photo taken at the same time as the top photo above. However, we couldn’t get Bronco to sit still between Baylor and Baby.

Bronco is standing at the kitchen entrance, and our new little dark brown and white puppy is sitting in front of him. — In this photo our Leonberger dog Bronco is eleven and a half years old, and we had acquired a new puppy, a mini-Australian Shepherd by the name Rollo.

One thing all our dogs loved was going for a car ride. The big dogs loved sticking their heads out the window and feeling the wind in their faces. The little dogs loved going places. And they all loved looking at the passing scenery. Oh, the things you can see when you’re “ridin’ in the car, car,” as the Woody Guthrie song goes!

There were some sights that got the dogs especially excited. They would bark if they saw people working on roofs or riding bicycles, for example. They would become even more animated if we got close to a dog park or a McDonald’s drive-through window. (That might have been because sometimes we bought them snacks at the McDonald’s drive-through.)

One time when I was taking Bronco, Baylor, and Baby to the dog park, a car passing me slowed down and started driving right next to me. I looked over, slightly annoyed, and saw that the people in the car were pointing at us and laughing. I was thinking, “What is their problem?” Then I glanced back at the dogs and realized that we did look funny. Bronco was sitting in the front passenger seat with his head close to the roof, looking majestic. Baylor and Baby were sitting in their own seats in the back. They probably looked like human passengers from a distance, but as the people in the car got closer, they realized that the heads weren’t human heads but dogs’ heads and burst out laughing.

I can add that most of the time we put the dogs in the back of our van or SUV but since they preferred to sit on a seat like humans do, we started letting them sit on the seats. If you let them sit on the seats you need to attach them to the car seat latch using dog safety restraint (dog seat belt). Sometimes, the dogs wanted to drive but it is difficult to get a driver license for a dog in Texas. In the picture below Rollo did not really drive the car. I used that photo for an April 1^st joke.