Federica Carr shares highlights and insights of travelling by train from London to Southern Italy with her fluffy four-legged sidekick Amber in a series of Continental Canine posts.
Most dog owners can be divided into two groups: the first is made up of those who get a dog, perhaps following a fashion or a whim of a family member, and attach it to their lives as an accessory, treating it as as animal and often omitting to provide the most basic level of care and affection a pet requires.
The second category is the one my husband and I most surely fall under, that is to say those of us who get a pooch and soon become so engrossed by it that we then treat it as a fully fledged member of the family, bestowing the dog with possibly, in the eyes of some, too much affection and often the same level of care given to the human members of the family.
Amber, our six years old Basset Fauve de Bretagne, showed us how easy it was to fall into the latter category: she’s a fun, quirky, well behaved pet, she’s beautiful and it took no time, even for someone who’d never had a dog before like us, to be completely in love with her.
That is why we wanted to lead a life as dog friendly as possible. This proved not a big problem, except when flying was involved. Dogs are usually not accepted on airplanes (except of course, guide and assistance dogs) and, even if they are, above a certain weight (around 8kg) must fly in the cargo.
Of course, we would never put Amber under such stress. The options unfortunately, if we want to take her on holiday with us, are somehow limited. Before another little one joined our family (this time of the human kind), we drove down to southern Italy two summers in a row; we bought an old convertible Jag and off we went through the chunnel, through France and onto the sunny shores of Italy.
She hates pretty much any form of transport but she put up with hours on the motorways, loo breaks in service stations, roadside motels and morning walks in sleepy medieval villages. We loved our driving holidays.
Such a long trip however, has also become off limits for a while due to the aforementioned baby, yet this year it seemed even more important that she joined us during our August trip: she’s part of the family, and as such, she really should be with us.
What options are left? Train, of course!
After months of planning routes, legs, stopovers, countries, the family split and while dad and son took a quick plane ride, Amber and yours truly finally made our way successfully to our destination on the coast of Lazio, an hour south of Rome. The journey down took a day and a half and involved one tube ride, five train trips, a taxi ride, a euro shuttle passage and a lot of walking.
Do you want to know how we did it? Then follow our Continental Canine adventure with more posts coming soon.
