Taking 4 month old pup on holiday?

[ChocolateRaisin]

I have an 11 week old GSD pup who so far has settled in brilliantly, house training going well and he is generally a pleasure to have around. DH and I are considering going away for a week in October to a dog friendly cottage in Wales and I would really like to take him with us, along with our 10 yr old JRTx.

It is mainly going to be a relaxing break with a bit of walking. The idea would be to spend the majority of time with the pup, taking for short walks and to see different things and then if we want to occasionally go for a longer walk, leave him back at the cottage in his play pen with a couple of stuffed kongs to keep him busy until he falls asleep.

I don't want to go away without him while he is still so young, so it will either be take him or don't go.

Would it be a really silly idea to take him?

I think it's a really good idea. We took our pup to a cottage when she was a bit older, around 7 months. She's always travelled well, but the longer journey was good for her to get used to.

We all loved it, the new sights, sounds & scents wore her out. Obviously we could walk her more as she was bigger, but still not much. We also left her in a crate with kongs & it was fine.

We took Eric on holiday for the first time when he was about four months old. It was lovely, he travelled well and was house trained. We took him with us most of the time, he was tiny so carried him if it was too far or too busy. He played on the beach and in the garden and had a whale of a time. He gets stupidly excited nowadays when he sees the suitcase so have to pack out of sight.

We only go on holidays where our dog can come with us, although he is an older dog.
Bet your pup will have a great time with his family and be admired wherever you go!

We took our pup at about 6 months. He was great.

We took our pup on holiday when he was 6 months. It was great, I'm sure it really helped to socialize and with training. Lots of new people, places and scenarios for him to experience.

Thank you for the responses. We've decided to definitely take him. Due to DH's work, we can't go until November now which will make him 5 months, I do feel a bit more comfortable about that.

Took both of ours away at six months. Both (years apart) were fine. OK if dog is housetrained (but many holiday places have hard flooring just in case). Only problem is you can't exercise dog too much at that age (25 minutes at a time). Have a fabulous time :)

We took ours away at around 16 weeks. He was too young for home boarding so it was that or not go away at all.

It was lovely, actually. We did walks (although he was too small for really long ones) and introduced him to paddling in the sea. We found dog-friendly pubs for evening meals.

He wasn't terribly reliable in the weeing indoors front, so we took a large plastic sheet to put over the main carpet area.

The only slight issue was that although we'd booked our cottage (barn conversion) through a dog-friendly website, other guests hadn't, necessarily. So there was a family next door with a small child who screamed whenever he saw our pup. Not helped that he (pup) would run off with their flip flops if he saw them outside their door! . Fortunately, the parents were very sensible and used the opportunity to get the boy to know the dog, so it was OK in the end.