Quebec with a dog
Why go to Canada with your dog? How to organize your trip to Quebec with your dog? How do dogs adapt to the Canadian climate? Discover all this thanks to the testimony of Sylvain, the master of Soïa and Thor!
Table of contents
Today I present to you a Too W'ouf Destination where to go with your dog: CANADA! In the article Traveling with your dog in Canada I explained to you all the precautions for flying with a dog and the formalities to follow when you want to set foot in Céline's country! It is Sylvain master of Soïa and Thor who presents their crazy adventure to us Quebec with a dog!
A big family: 2 dogs, 1 cat and 2 humans
We are a family of 5, 2 dogs, 1 cat and 2 humans. First there is Soïa, the oldest (12 years old when we left), who is a nice mix of several breeds, very robust and resistant. Pagaille, a cat (3 years old at the start) very cuddly and pot of glue, a purring machine who thinks he's a dog and follows us everywhere.
And the youngest, Thor (10 months at the time of departure), a black and white Brittany spaniel, a hunter through and through. He is very very energetic, requires a lot of attention and has a tendency to run away, so he should be watched like milk on the stove! On the human side, there is my wife, Armelle, and myself, Sylvain.
Why go to Canada with your dogs?
We were lumberjacks in France in the Hérault hinterland and we dreamed of going to Canada. My wife found training there. So we sold everything in France and went to Quebec with our dogs. At the beginning, we were leaving for 10 months and we finally stayed for 2 years. Obviously, we couldn't leave without our doggies and our cat. We have therefore taken all the necessary steps to be able to travel with our animals (up-to-date health record, rabies vaccine, passports, IATA approved cages, tickets on the same flight as us)
At the airport, my wife was very stressed. She was afraid that the flight would go wrong for her babies. The airline staff was very reassuring, but when she saw our animals leaving their side in their cages she burst into tears. I admit that I wasn't far behind either, but I had to be strong for the two of us. The flight went pretty well. Upon arrival, we picked up our animals in an area reserved for them. We were looking forward to being able to get them out. Once the formalities were done, we were finally able to get them out on a leash, in front of the airport entrance.
Moving to Canada with your dogs
A Quebec friend came to pick us up at the airport to take us from Montreal to Quebec with our dogs where we had rented a hotel while waiting to find accommodation. the hotel accepts dogs and cats with a supplement of $20 per animal and only in the rooms on the ground floor, like American Motel.
We immediately bought a car because everything is far away in Quebec! When we started looking for an apartment, we quickly realized that finding one accommodation that accepts dogs was going to be really complicated. Cats are accepted more easily, especially if they are declawed, an operation which consists of removing the last phalanx of the fingers, so that the claws do not grow back. We didn't: what a horror! In the equivalent of the Quebec Boncoin “Kijiji” there is a search option “chat/dog accepted”, this option leaves only a very small choice of accommodation. We ended up finding accommodation almost 80 km from Armelle's school. But our babies had a garden (of course open to the neighbors' garden, because fences do not exist in Quebec). Our Quebec life could begin!
What to do with your dog in Quebec?
You should know that in Quebec dogs must be kept on a leash in all circumstances. In town, a dog that wanders for even five minutes is immediately picked up by the SPCA (equivalent to the SPA). You obviously have to pay to get your dog back. If he spent a night in the box, it costs the modest sum of $50.
Even if Quebec does not have quite the same consideration for pets as we do, there is a real community that likes to share everything with its dog(s). For sports enthusiasts (and there are a lot of them in Quebec), there is the “Club de sports canins attelés de Québec” which brings together and offers outings for lovers of canicross, skijoring, bikejoring, snow scooter, sled with small hitch etc… There are many canicross races offered throughout Quebec.
There is a place dedicated to dogs in quebec “Aqua comfort”, which has a indoor pool for dogs and masters. They also offer socialization classes, games, agility courses, massage therapy, hydrotherapy, as well as grooming and a shop where you can find everything for the dog. Aqua Confort was recommended to me by my friend Martine who is passionate about animals and especially her 2 dogs. What she particularly likes about it is being able to sbathe with his dogs in the indoor pool in the middle of winter. And his dogs love it. Unfortunately I did not have the chance to test this with mine.
The SEPAQ Parks, the Duchesnay station for example at Sainte Catherine de la Jacques Cartier accept dogs kept on a leash on the hiking trails. In the Jacques Cartier National Park, you can also do long hiking with your dog kept on a leash. Here, being much less supervised since in full immensity one can release his dog but it should not be forgotten that one is in full wild nature and that one can cross all kinds of wild animals which are on their territories. For example, I have often encountered:
Quebec black bears: much smaller than a grizzly but it's still a bear!
moose: kind of huge moose
wolves, coyotes,
porcupines: really to be avoided for dogs because it is quite slow to move, dogs want to play with it and find themselves filled with thorns which are very long to remove with tweezers!! I lived it with Thor and it was not a cakewalk neither for him nor for me
skunks: a kind of little skunk that releases a very smelly liquid on the dog if he gets too close, and even after a bath the dog will smell for several days!! Absolutely to avoid, Thor made us come home with this strong and gripping smell, it took us 2 days to manage to get rid of it after multiple baths, he was not proud.
In the summer, the most annoying of all the critters you can come across in Quebec are ox flies (huge horseflies come out), mosquitoes (of all sizes, those that give a small bite, those that act like a electric shock)… The best way to protect our dogs was to stay indoors during the day and go for a walk more in the evening.
Adaptation of dogs to the Canadian climate
And surprisingly, much better than us!! Thor celebrated his 1 year there shortly after our arrival in summer and then winter slowly set in from late August to early September. Gradually the temperatures dropped, then the snow arrived. Thor and Soia played like crazy in the snow, when it snowed they tried to swallow the flakes.
And then the polar temperatures made their entrance. We had -30°, -35°, -40°, -45° for whole weeks, Soïa only went out to relieve herself (as close as possible to the door), Thor had completely changed her hair , and he was able to stay outside for almost hours, while Soïa slept warm in front of the heater.
The final word
To conclude, we had an extraordinary experience with our animals, we did almost everything according to them, we really don't regret having taken them with us. They were so happy to be with us, to discover this immensity of Quebec.