Tegu Roadtrip

[Skeep]

I have a couple of friends who take their gus on road trips and I was thinking of doing the same with my little girl, for about 5 days. The trip is essentially a 12 hour drive to a hotel, where we will stay 4 nights, and then a 12 hour drive back home. I was wondering if some people here have done this and what your experiences are?

My main concerns are what to bring, how to prepare her and make sure she will be ok with it before leaving (in May), logistics of where she can sleep/hide etc. I have some ideas but would be interested in hearing what others have done that works or doesn't!

 

[marydd]

Personally I would find a reptile sitter. Change stresses tegus out.

 

[Gandalf]

It really depends on what your tegu is accustomed to, and where you are going. If you tegu spends most of the time in a cage, the changes will probably freak her out. If you are going somewhere cold, like a skiing trip, definitely not a good idea.

That being said, if you are going somewhere warm, and you tegu is large and used to free roaming around new environments, it might be ok. I wouldn't recommend traveling with a small tegu because its too easy to lose her somewhere in the hotel, or even her crawling into cracks under the dash in your car or something like that.

We've taken our tegu with us on multiple trips, nights in hotels, train rides, etc, and he has always been fine. He is used to roaming around in strange environments and just hangs out in the hotel room. We don't feed him for a week or so before travel so that he doesn't need to poop, and then its pretty easy. He's also used to sleeping in bed with us, so its not that big a change being a hotel.

Depending on the length of the trip, we may or may not bring a heat lamp for him. If its just overnight, usually not. If we are going to be in a hotel for a week we'll usually bring a heat lamp for him and just set it up in a corner of the hotel room. We don't feed him when traveling, but every day we'll offer him some water either from a cup or in the hotel bathtub depending on the circumstances. We bring his leash, just in case, but have never ended up using it. We bring a large duffel bag w/blankets in it in case we need to contain him for short periods (but we never zip it closed because I don't think its breathable), but we only use it for short periods like going through a hotel lobby w/him or something like that. The longest he's ever been in a car was about and hour, and he's fine for sitting on people's laps, but if we were doing a 12 hour trip I'l probably have just taken the blankets out of his bag, put them in the back seat or maybe the floor (depending on room in car), and let him burrow in the blankets and sleep.

 

[Skeep]

Thanks for the great reply!

One of my biggest worries is her size. We are traveling 1 week before her first hatchday, but she has been growing like crazy. She's already getting too large to fit into most annoying places, and I wouldn't be surprised if she doubled in size again before we leave.

She gets quite a lot of free roam time in at home, and is an exploring monster. I'm impressed how high she can jump just to poke around inside bins and get ontop of everything! I have only taken her out of the apartment once so far; a trip to the office, which went well. At first she was nervous but after about 20 minutes she was running around my office exploring everywhere. She got shy when lots of people were around but otherwise she was ok. Before I take her I will definitely want to get her out to more places to see how she responds. Maybe let her get used to the truck a bit while parked too.

My tegu has slept with me a few times and she seems to really enjoy it. Bed sheets are one of her favorite things, lol, she will even ignore food if she gets to explore the sheets, and she will curl up against me for the night no problem. Until the morning when she's ready to go and she tries to wake me up.

We're driving from cold Seattle to Reno so I think she'll like the climate change if anything. Most of the driving will be done during the time she usually sleeps so I was thinking of letting her curl up in a large dufflebag with towels. I was also going to bring a heat pad for her for the drive and the hotel as needed, and a lamp. Since she is growing like a weed, she sheds every 1-2 weeks, so I was hoping to use damp towels for her to hide in during the day to keep her humidity up.

My second biggest worry is feeding/pooping. She is accustomed to eating quite a sizable amount of food each morning, and if she doesn't get it she gets grouchy. I might be able to wean her down on food, especially if I turn down the temperature in her cage, but I don't know if I could get her to skip eating for 2 weeks (one week in advance and one week travel) unless I want to travel with a mean lizard. Fortunately, she mostly goes to the bathroom in the tub but not always, so that could be fun if I keep feeding. When it gets closer to the date I can try getting her used to eating less often and see how she handles it.

 

[Skeep]

Personally I would find a reptile sitter. Change stresses tegus out.

This would be my safe default option if I can't make sure she'll be ok on the trip. But I've traveled with other friends who brought their tegus and the tegus seemed to quite enjoy it, which is why I'm considering it.