Last year my husband and I spent most of the spring and summer shopping for a travel trailer style RV, which I blogged about in the post, Our Search for a Labrador Friendly Camping Trailer. A few weeks later we purchased a super cool model called the TrailManor that folds down like a big pop-up but opens to be the size of a travel trailer, complete with a tiny bathroom and air conditioning, my two girly-girl requirements in a camper. 
Of course, now that we have the camper, the "we could camp at Disney" discussion is on again. My husband would really love to stay at Fort Wilderness Campground, but no matter how much I love the outdoors, with the "rope-drop-to-kiss-goodnight" way that we do the Disney parks, after twelve or more hours of walking in theme park temperatures, I want ice cold air conditioning, a gorgeous shower, and a big clean bed every night. I'm fine with being dirty and grungy if our whole goal is to just hike with the dogs and relax in the woods, but "Diehard Disney Days with the Smiths" require hot showers, soap, and muscle restoring rest!
Because he knows exactly how to convince me to go along with his plans, my husband tossed this idea out into our shared universe: If we take the camper down to Disney, we can take the dogs with us.
Wait, what?
I can go to my beloved Florida, go to Disney, visit my Dad, AND have my dogs with us, avoiding the separation anxiety that I go through each trip?
Sign. Me. Up.
Of course, that excitement was immediately followed by my famous "what if" scenarios. You know, the kind that makes me excellent at thinking of endless dog safety topics for this blog but also drives more level-headed and less imaginative people (aka my husband and a few of our kids) crazy!
"What if the RV air conditioner malfunctions?
What if we blow a fuse? Is that even a thing?
What if someone unplugs us from the power source?
What if the RV park loses power?
I cannot go and have fun in a theme park while I am worried about my babies overheating in a hot camper!"
I have read several stories about losing power in the RV groups that I have joined on Facebook since we purchased our TrailManor, including one where the neighbors unplugged the RV and plugged theirs in instead, and they had their dogs inside! Thankfully their dogs were ok, but it made me double down on my mandate that if we were to take the dogs anywhere in the RV and we leave them for any amount of time, we will not do so without a temperature monitor.
Now, in all honesty, the way we do our intense all day park days, if Jackson and Tinkerbell were with us, I would probably take them over to the boarding kennel near the parks instead of leaving them alone in an unfamiliar place in their travel crates for more than a few hours at a time. I would never leave them in crates for that long, I would rather they be home with their pet sitter. The last few trips, though, we've started visiting Disney more like "normal" people, going to the parks in the morning until the noon heat and crowds develop, going back to the room and pool for the afternoon, and then back to the parks at night. But still, I would be a nervous wreck not knowing what was happening back at our RV no matter how short a time we were away.
So, Florida RVing with the dogs has not happened yet, but we've taken them out locally and they've had a blast sniffing new areas, getting to be around actual trees (Jax marked literally every single one on every walk), and have staked out their sleeping spots inside with us, with Jackson on the sofa and Tinkerbell up in the bed with us humans. Each time I've thought about the RV Pet Safety Monitor that I had tested last year in a product review, and wished that we had one just in case the Disney issue came up again or we are camping locally and want to go swim in the campground pool or do something where the dogs were not allowed.
A few weeks ago, though, my phone rang, and my same friend who had originally let me try out the RV Pet Safety Monitor was on the phone and offered to send me her unit because she remembered that my husband and I were actively shopping for a camper. I eagerly accepted her offer, and I now have my very own monitor charging next to me as I type!
The RV Pet Safety Monitor is a really cool invention, and I like the fact that the company has experience in other types of cooling systems, so the technology is not new. Nimble Wireless, the company who sells the RV Pet Safety Monitor, also engineers and sells products that monitor refrigerated semi trucks, restaurants and cold rooms in the food industry. They decided to expand their technology to pets because just like so many of us, they saw the countless heartbreaking stories of dogs who have perished from being left in hot vehicles, and wanted to use their expertise to help save lives. 
I'm excited to have my own unit, so once it is ready I will give you an update on the setup of the device and my account. I plan on testing it out in a variety of situations without my dogs, so I can show how it monitor's the environment from everywhere using the cellular network. In the meantime, here are some photos of the unboxing of the device, I personally adore the little hang tag that they provide that you could put on the handle of your RV if you were camping somewhere.
