Transport Canada policy states that passengers travelling on BC Ferries are not allowed to remain in their cars on any enclosed vehicle decks. This means if you are parked on the lower vehicle deck of the ferry you will not be able to stay in your car with your dog – something many dog owners prefer to do. According to the information put out by BC Ferries, if you have a pet you can request to be placed on the top deck so you can remain in your vehicle and they will do their best to accommodate you.

The reality is that vehicles with reservations are loaded on the top deck first, the remaining space is loaded with the vehicles without reservations, in the order they arrived at the terminal. They do not segregate vehicles-with-dogs in their own staging line at the terminals, so there’s no way to guarantee they’re loaded on the top deck.

It’s understandable that BC Ferries wouldn’t want these vehicles to jump the first-come first-served queue by creating a staging line for vehicles-with-dogs at the terminals. However, by leaving vehicles-with-dogs in the same staging lines as the other first-come first-serve vehicles, their pet policy is basically useless, unless you happen to arrive at the terminal very early for your sailing and are placed near the front of the non-reservation staging lines.

We all love to take our dogs with us when we travel and have done it enough that we don’t really think about the logistics anymore – we bring food and water for them, stop for bathroom breaks and walks to stretch their legs, and we never leave them in a hot vehicle when we have to run into a store. So what do you do when you’re loaded onto a ferry and you’re not allowed to stay in your vehicle with your dog?

You could leave your dog in your vehicle with some water and the windows down a few inches but in the hot summer weather that’s not really any different from leaving your dog in a hot vehicle when you run into a store. Sure, you’re not parked in the sun, and there is usually a good breeze coming off the water after you’ve set sail, but those vehicle decks get just as hot.

Leaving your dog unattended in your vehicle can be risky and dangerous. You cannot guarantee that leaving the windows down will keep your dog cool enough and leaving your windows down too far could allow negative interactions between your dog and other dogs or people walking by.

All that metal the ship is built with absorbs a lot of heat. Add a whole bunch of vehicles which were baking in the summer sun at the terminal and/or have engines at full operating temperature, and you’ve got an uncomfortably hot enclosed space with little air flow until you set sail, especially on the lower deck which has no “windows” along the side and only gets its airflow from the front and rear loading ramps.