My name is Jeanette. In 2004 my husband, Jay, and I adopted a schnauzer mix from Arizona Schnauzer Rescue named Riley.
We are inveterate and adventurous travelers, so we hit the road as often as possible. But we often find it difficult and challenging to locate pet friendly accommodations that allow us to bring our four-legged family member with us. We have friends who would happily take Riley, but there are times that we really want to take him with us – and, as we can tell from the effusive tail wagging, he enjoys traveling, too.
In the spring of 2010, we began to plan a road trip from our home in Phoenix, Arizona to Ajijic, Mexico which included Riley. I quickly discovered that finding pet friendly hotels in Mexico was beyond challenging. It was positively frustrating.
After hours of research on the internet, I finally found a website that provided some help. Jane Wilkinson, who with her husband and two dogs reside in Oregon, explains how she started the first-ever web page devoted exclusively to places to stay in Mexico:
We took our first annual driving trip to Mexico in early 2003, and we have been doing this annually ever since, always with los perros in tow. Given our wanderlust, we go all over the country with no concrete itinerary. This makes planning ahead for accommodations difficult. We discovered that there are no national chain motels that consistently accept pets and that Mexican innkeepers regard traveling with pets as a peculiar and perhaps distasteful north-American oddity. Therefore, we had, at least in the beginning, a great deal of difficulty finding decent (or even indecent) pet-friendly lodgings, particularly away from the beaches. I ran into other people with the same problem and therefore decided to start a simple listing of pet-friendly Mexican accommodations on the web. The site has grown a lot, due to the sizeable number of user contributions I have received, although it was a bit of work keeping it up. Growing weary of the task, I was happy to turn over this effort to Jeanette, and I wish her all the best. Jane
Jane’s travel blog is still active and is a great read. Visit her at www.gringodog.net.
Most of us in the community of pet lovers consider them a part of the family. We want them to be safe, comfortable and happy when they are at home as well as when they travel. Gringo Dog’s mission is to help pet loving families find resources that help you make that a reality. Accordingly, when Jay and I took over Jane’s list, we decided to add powerful tools to search for pet friendly hotels in the USA and Mexico, pet travel tips, and pet travel accessories. We’re even working on information for alternatives to hotels that are pet friendly – things like home exchange and vacation rentals.
The information on this site is free. Our expenses are covered when you use our search boxes or make a purchase through one of our suggested merchants and we thank you for using them.
We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve our site. We especially need your reviews on pet friendly accommodations. Include your photos of Fido or Kitty and we’ll post them with your reviews. Click here to shoot us an email.
