Travel Stix – Pet Care and Travel for Dogs USB Flash Drive

Travel Stix For Pets

Today we are going to look at the Travel Stix Dog Care & Travel Flash drive made by Solex Enterprises LLC specifically for those that travel with their dogs. This drive contains
important forms and is for owners who are leaving their pet with a
kennel or having their pet travel with them. The company also offers 10 different Travel Stix Flash Drives for those that have other travel document needs such as Child Traveling Alone (within the US), Child Traveling Alone (International Travel), Child Care Package (travel within the U.S.), Traveling Parent (forms to leave behind and a form when a parent travels solo with the kid overseas), Grandparent Package, Cat Pet Care & Travel, College Student Package, Business Traveler Package and Dog Care & Travel.

As you can see the flash drive itself is about the same size as a credit card, which means that it is rather thin and could easily fit in your wallet or purse. The drive is also bright orange in color, making it hard to over look or be misplaced. The Travel Stix Flash drive seems rather durable and has a total capacity of 512MB with 472MB of space remaining free. [UPDATE 2/6/10 1PM CST: It would appear Travel Stix has begun shipping 1024MB (1GB) capacity USB Flash drives now for the same price and has discontinued use of 512MB Flash drives]

Like mentioned above the Travel Stix includes two forms for kenneling, traveling or emergency situations and a European health certificate. Other documents on the drive include a general explanation of what comes on the drive as well as a legal form from the company explaining they are not liable for anything.

One of the forms, Pet Rules is one of those that is great to always have on hand and to keep up-to-date. Included on that form are things like your dogs feeding schedule, medicines or treatments given, favorite places for walking and walking schedule, veterinarians phone number and address and there is even a space to list your pets bad habits. That form has more of a broad overview of everything one would need to leave there pet somewhere or with someone and not have to worry about them.

Another form that comes on the travel stix is the Pet Medical Authorization, a handy form to have if you are leaving your pet somewhere. On this form it includes things like owner contact information, nearby relative information. The other important part of this form is the owner authorization for treatment which is crucial when there is an emergency and its hard to get a hold of the owner.

The last important file on the Forms 4 Pets Travel Stix is the EU998, which essentially is a small animal heath certificate for dogs, cats and ferrets entering the European community. This is nice form to have if you are planning a vacation with your dog. With that being said we found the same form for free with a simple Google search at a number of sites like this one for example.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions:

The Travel Stix forms for pets and the other nine models are available for purchase directly through Forms4travel.com for $24.95 with free first class 5-7 day USPS shipping. At first we thought that this device would be nice have as it can give you better piece of mind while youre gone, but then we got to thinking. You are paying $28.95 for a 512MB USB Flash drive that is so small in capacity that online e-tailers like Newegg.com don’t even sell them in that size anymore. For example you can buy a 8GB USB Flash drive for $17.99 shipped just to give you an idea of what you can get for roughly the same price. Then we get to the forms themselves. Only two of the three forms are custom made and are essentially all that you are paying for. Since they must be printed off, signed and left for the pet sitter and veterinary office we are left asking ourselves why even put them on a USB Flash drive at all? Travel Stix informed us that you can print them off, sign them and then scan the forms in order for them to be placed back onto the credit card style USB drive to take with you during your trip. That way you have all of the forms on you while you travel, but you still need to be in a location with a computer. We’ve vacationed in destinations like the Dominican Republic and had to go visit a doctor and we know for certain the doctor we went to did not have a computer. You might be thinking why not just sell the forms you need individually and then e-mail the PDF forms to the customer and charge them for just the forms? By doing it this way you can access the files at any PC or mobile device around the world and can have them printed out at will. It also means that if you get your wallet or purse stolen that all your information on this credit card style USB drive would be preserved on the internet. You would think that this would reduce the cost considerably as the custom printed USB drive wouldn’t be needed and no one would have to pay for the packaging and shipping costs, but the forms still cost $12.95 each.

In the end you are essentially paying for one 512MB USB Flash drive and three key forms, one of which you can get free off the internet and the other two you could make yourself if you just sat down and listed everything a sitter or kennel would need to know. The forms that come on the Travel Stix are nice though as they have the prompts and suggestion that come on the
forms provided.We actually contacted a couple of the larger veterinary clinics in St. Louis Missouri and found out that if your pet is already being seen there that they had their own authorization form that you could fill out and then you’d just need to tell the pet sitter or boarding house to take the animal to that location. The form that comes on the Travel Stix is nice if you don’t have a clinic or emergency hospital that you go to, but it also doesn’t mean that the location has to give your pet service.

Legit Bottom Line: The Travel Stix Forms 4 Pets USB Flash drive is a good idea, however it is priced on the high side for what you get.