eighteen hundred mile drive austin to seattle in six weeks with our three year old leash reactive shepherd mix and looking for the calibrated take from families who have actually done a long road trip with a reactive dog on decompression timing, crash rated crates, and lodging strategy

Jasper is our 3 year old shepherd mix, 62lb, we adopted him at 9 months old from a high kill shelter in west texas. his reactivity profile is medium-severe leash reactive to other dogs, we have been doing the CARE protocol with our trainer for the last 14 months, we have made real progress, he can now do 30ft passes with another dog without going over threshold most days. but he is still emphatically not the dog you can park outside a coffee shop and expect to be fine. job relocation is taking us from austin to seattle in 6 weeks, the drive is 33 hours of actual driving which we're planning to spread over 4 days. asking the community for the calibrated take because i've read 40 generic "road trip with dog" blog posts and not one of them is written for a reactive dog.

the specific questions where i want honest answers from people who have done this. one, crash rated crates, are the gunner kennels and ruff land kennels worth the $700-1100 price tag for a 4 day trip and ongoing daily use after, or is the variocage or a strapped-down standard wire crate functionally equivalent for our purposes. i'm leaning gunner but i want to hear from people who actually own one and use it daily, not from the marketing copy. two, decompression timing, how often should we be stopping for actual decompression breaks (not just bathroom breaks), and what does a good decompression stop look like for a reactive dog where most rest stops are full of other leashed dogs and we cannot just turn him loose in a field somewhere. three, lodging strategy, our plan was to book ahead at LaQuinta or Best Western locations that are pet friendly and request ground floor rooms, but i'm worried about the lobby and hallway dog encounters that we cannot manage with sightlines. is there a smarter lodging type (extended stay properties, ground floor with exterior entrance only, AirBnB with no shared entry, KOA cabins) for a reactive dog. four, food and stress, jasper tends to go off his food when stressed and i don't want a 4 day road trip turning into a 4 day food strike that then messes him up for the first 2 weeks in the new apartment in seattle.

happy to write all this up after we make it but right now i need the version from people who have actually done long distance moves with reactive dogs. not the version from a buzzfeed list that assumes every dog is fine in a hotel lobby. willing to spend on the right gear, willing to drive longer or shorter days, willing to do whatever the actual answer is, just need to know what the actual answer is