Travel like that for long enough, and you learn something: the big questions are rarely the ones you expect. They're the small, practical ones — can my dog even come in here? Does he need to be on a leash? Is a muzzle required? What vaccinations does this country actually want? Do I have got everything else sorted — and is there even worse things that could happen to us?
Again and again, on our own trips, we simply couldn't find this information. Sometimes it was buried in an outdated forum post. Sometimes in a PDF on some authority's website that nobody could ever find. Most of the time: nowhere at all. You just set off and hope it works out — with a family member in the car you're personally responsible for.
At some point, we started collecting this information ourselves. Country by country, region by region. What began as our own travel notes slowly turned into PetTrip — an app that answers exactly these questions before you even leave.
Apps that help you find a spot for the night often already flag whether pets are welcome there — a great start. Our focus is entirely on the dog: PetTrip goes a layer deeper with the legal side per country, so you know about leash rules, muzzle requirements or vaccinations before you even arrive — not just whether you're allowed to park, but how to make the trip as easy on your dog as possible.
Along the way, a few things became non-negotiable for us:
How we work
Every rule and every feature starts with one question: is this actually useful for someone traveling with a dog? PetTrip isn't a general pet-travel checklist with dogs tacked on — it's built around dogs, specifically.
We'd rather do Europe properly first, instead of spreading ourselves too thin across the whole world right away. Some countries beyond Europe — like parts of Morocco — are already included, with more to follow. The app itself launched in English first, with more languages being added over time.
No purchased datasets, no scraped shortcuts. Every rule is researched by hand — often by contacting the responsible authority directly, since official information can take months to even show up online. No AI can shortcut that part; it can only repeat what's already been published somewhere.
Travelers on the ground usually notice when something changes long before it's written down anywhere official. We want PetTrip to catch up to reality as fast as possible — ideally hearing it from you, not from a government document months later. That said, we still rely mainly on official authority documents and statements, and we don't change the app based on unverified reports — your reports help us know where to look and double-check, rather than being applied directly.
We've been on the road for almost 10 years, a good part of it in a van with our two dogs. Every feature exists because we needed it ourselves, first — including Near Me, our place finder, which already covers more than 55,000 places across Europe: vets, pet stores, groomers, dog parks, shelters and dog boarding. That list only gets better with the community: report a place that's missing, flag one that's closed or wrong, and you help it get more accurate for the next traveler — while earning points along the way.
PetTrip is run by two people and two dogs — small, but moving constantly, and we're not done adding to it. A poison-bait alert system is next on our list, so travelers can warn each other in real time, close to where it happened. We'd also like to grow Near Me beyond vets, pet stores, groomers, dog parks, shelters and boarding — think dog-friendly beaches, restaurants and hiking trails — together with the community. Beyond that: more countries, more languages, and whatever you tell us is missing next.
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