The Road Goes on Forever

...at least it sometimes feels that way

We and the dogs landed in Newark, through the whole flight I worried that United might make an unscheduled stop in Kentucky and force our slightly-non-comforming dogs off the plane. That didn’t happen, of course. We landed, and as soon as we got off the jetway we started looking for a pet relief area. We found it after a minor hike, but the dogs didn’t understand the purpose of the room which was clean but (unsurprisingly) stank of dog pee and inadequate drainage.

It’s really nice that Newark airport has these pet relief areas, but Rudy was NOT interested.

We collected our luggage, found an outdoor space for the dogs to do their business (which they did quickly - they really needed to go, they just had no idea what that dank pet relief area was all about).

We took the short shuttle ride to the hotel, checked in, freed the doggos from their carriers and promptly ordered pizza and two cocktails from room service. We dug into the mediocre pizza and sipped greedily at the cocktails; what a stressful day.

The dogs were not hungry and refused the kibble we had packed from home, but they drank a lot of water and nibbled on a few crumbs from the pizza crust (I’m an indulgent parent and, much to Carolyn’s chagrin, I almost always give them a taste of whatever I’m eating). We showered and snuggled into bed with Woody and Rudy to watch TV, family style, until we fell asleep.

The bed at the airport hotel was too high for our dogs to jump onto so we made a salmon ladder with the ottoman.

We paid for a late (3:00) checkout since our flight wasn’t until the evening. The big topic of discussion was how to adjust the dosage and timing of the anti-anxiety meds our vet had prescribed. Rudy had growled all the way through the three hour flight from Austin and we didn’t want a repeat of that on a seven hour international flight. We decided to double the dose (two tablets) of Gabapentin and to continue with one tablet of Trazedone. The meds take about three hours to start working and last for about eight hours. We timed it so that the meds would just be starting to take effect as we boarded the plane.

Our flight to Paris was with a French airline that was new to us, La Compagnie. It’s an all business class flight and our main reason for choosing them was that they have higher weight/size limits for pets than the major airlines.

Despite our late checkout we still had to kill some time at the airport. Our flight was scheduled for 6:30. We thought three hours was a standard check-in window for international flights, but the ticket desks for La Compagnie were closed when we arrived and wouldn’t open until 4:30. So we sat with all our luggage and waited for an hour.

When the check-in counter opened we were delighted to find that getting the dogs into the cabin wouldn’t require any of the luck or escalating conversations with supervisors that we had endured with United. The agent asked politely to see the pets’ paperwork for entering France, checked our passports, and wished us a pleasant flight. She also gave us a $60 voucher that was explicitly “valid for alcohol” and apologized that they didn’t have their own lounge for us to enjoy. After an easy security screening we found a restaurant to put those vouchers to use and chatted with a delightful couple who were on their way to Portugal. During our cocktail/conversation Rudy was sitting in Carolyn’s lap and we watched him slowly sink into a twilight state of compliance as the meds started to work.

Rudy was pretty woozy after his anti-anxiety meds kicked in. This was less than half of the maximum dose the vet said was permissible! I think the effects were magnified by the stress of the previous day’s travel.

On the plane we discovered that we had been assigned aisle seats across from each other. Luckily, the window seat next to me was empty so Carolyn took it, thinking she’d have a better chance of sneaking Rudy out of his carrier unnoticed if she wasn’t on the aisle.

We took off and as soon as the airplane got to cruising altitude, Carolyn took Rudy out of his carrier, reclined her seat, and they both went to sleep. It required no sneaking. Every attendant smiled at Rudy, commented on how cute he was and did nothing to suggest that there was a problem. I’m sure they can’t always be so lax and the stated policy is that dogs should remain in their carriers during the flight. Apparently, La Compagnie gives their employees some latitude to decide what is disruptive/dangerous and what is not. We respected the boundaries of their discretion by NOT removing Woody from his carrier. Woody is less of a velcro dog than Rudy; he would have wanted to go meet everyone on the airplane, maybe play a little fetch up and down the aisle, and beg for handouts during dinner service. “Can my dog see the cockpit? He’d REALLY like to meet the pilot! Do you have any of those souvenir pilot wings we could clip to his collar?”

It’s entirely possible that Carolyn is dipping into Rudy’s flight meds.

The flight was incredibly pleasant even though I couldn’t put my seat into sleeping position with Woody’s carrier tucked into the foot space. I considered moving to Carolyn’s old seat, across the aisle but I’d be taking up two seats for the price of one. If I put the attendants into a position where they have to tell me “no” they might also crack down on Rudy being out of his carrier. I reclined my seat as much as possible (I was quite comfortable!) and read Annie Erneaux’s A Woman’s Place. (Regular readers will remember this title/author from our previous post about French culture.)

Seven hours later at 9am local time, we landed at Orly airport in France. We got routed through priority screening for passport control (thank you again, La Compagnie!). The immigration guy looked at our passports and the dogs’ papers and sent us to collect our luggage.

Baggage collection was slow! We had plenty of time before our flight to Montpellier, but we were a bit anxious about finding the pet relief area or (better) an outdoor space with some grass. Orly is notoriously slow, but the bags FINALLY came down the chute and we headed to our next flight. Voila! We were on the ground in France with our dogs!

Carolyn walks the dogs through Orly airport while I manage the luggage cart (off camera).

We walked the dogs outside the airport and then found a place to sit until we could check our bags at noon. The agent at the Transavia check-in counter didn’t really care about the size of the dogs or carriers, she just wanted to weigh them. Rudy was well under the 12 kilo weight limit (dog plus carrier) but Woody was coming in at 14 kilos. He needed to shed 2 kilos (about 4.5 pounds). I made a big show of removing the heavy, braided shoulder strap and started to unzip the carrier to remove Woody’s leash and harness - knowing it wouldn’t be enough. But the attendant stopped me and said, “If you have some things you can remove to get him under weight limit just do that at the gate, please,” and she handed us our boarding passes. What a relief!

After the world’s most chaotic and rude security screening experience, we had several more hours to wait for our flight; we found reasonably comfortable chairs to sit in, nap, and take turns walking the dogs. Carolyn and Rudy went in search of the airport’s pet relief area (we no longer had access to the outside). The agents she asked didn’t know if a pet relief area existed but they made a few calls and finally told her she should hold the dog over the toilet!

Yeah, right.

She tried putting pee pads down on the bathroom floor, but Rudy wasn’t going for it. The dogs would have to hold it, at least the next flight was short and we had pee pads inside their carriers in case of accidents.

At 3:30 as we queued to board the flight, the gate agent walked down the line flagging bags that would have to be gate-checked. She stopped to look at Carolyn’s pet carrier which appeared too big because it had a wheeled trolley under it. Uh-oh, scrutiny is not our friend. Carolyn demonstrated that the trolley was removable and the pet carrier was, in fact, under the size limit. This worked to our advantage - the trolley was a convenient red herring. After a moment the gate agent moved on without even glancing at Woody the bigger dog, and we were in the clear!

Transavia is the opposite of La Compagnie - this was an all-coach aircraft and I had to struggle to get Woody’s carrier stowed. The space between the seat edge and the back of the seat in front of me was super-tight, but once I got the carrier down to the floor it fit easily below the seat. My knees were pressed into the seat ahead of me for the entire flight because the seats were spaced so tightly together.

Carolyn had an even worse trip. Rudy growled and barked from take-off to landing. The engines covered the noise for the most part but she apologized to her neighbors constantly as she kept a steady stream of treats flowing to Rudy. She figured he was just desperate to pee, poor guy. At least this leg of our trip was short.

Forty-five minutes later we landed in Montpellier and made our way down to baggage claim. We were (at last!) in Montpellier with our dogs, but we couldn’t exit the airport to relieve them until we had our luggage. We were desperate to get them outside.

The conveyor belt eventually groaned to life and our bags were among the first to come out. We collected them and headed outside where we quickly found a grassy area for the pets and then climbed into a taxi for the short ride to our sweet, sweet apartment where we rapidly stored our bags and took the pups out to explore their new neighborhood.

Woody and Rudy take their first walk in Montpellier’s l’écusson historic district; there’s over seven centuries worth of smells to sniff out in these streets!