I’m going to be flying my puppy across the country for his third or forth round trip in a few weeks. Whenever I mention flying with Wagandstuff I get emails from people asking how hard it is to take your dog on the plane, so I will address that here:
- Dogs under 15 pounds count as carry-on luggage, anything more than that I don’t know about.
- You need a Sherpa bag or another airline approved bag that slides under the seat in front of you
- You have to get papers from the vet that show your dog has all of his shots and/or lacks any diseases that may be gnarly when mixed with travel. This appointment cost 80 bucks not including the shots at my vet, but my vet is kind of expensive I’ve been told. Point is, it’s still cheeper to travel with him for a week than to board him.
- Yes, you should drug your dog. You get the sedatives at the vet when you get the papers. You can also use half a Benedryl if you are in a pinch.
- Supposedly you can’t take your dog out of the bag during the flight, but some airlines have let me bend this rules and put him on my lap.
It’s not bad, honestly. The worst part is that I know he hates being in the bag. I don’t know about you, but a bag sounds like a horrible place to spend seven hours to me. I get why it upsets him. I take a little bit of a human sedative on the plane, so I’m kinda dulled to the whole experience by the time I let him out of his bag and on to my lap to eat pretzels and give in-flight kisses.
When I flew home for Christmas, Wags was in an especially shitty mood and I was really wiped on the flight. I don’t think I slept for the 24 hours leading up to it and so when I got on the plane and took my half of a Xanax, I immediately surrendered and just pulled him out of the bag without consulting anyone in the row. I wrapped us both up in the complimentary blanket and put my hoodie over our faces and the two of us passed out. A couple hours before my flight landed, I was woken up by the flight attendant, who informed me that Wagandstuff had started eating the knitting of the elderly woman next to me. He straight up chomped on the sweater she was making. I felt so badly because I didn’t even bother to brief this poor old woman on my decision to let my dog crawl all over my row while I was sleeping. And he tried to eat her crafts. And he was probably really mean about it, knowing him.
Anyway, yeah. We’re about to do this for the forth time. It’s gonna be good. And now I know to keep him in the bag if I’m sleeping.
my dogs actually really like the bag — you need to feed them in the bag and give them treats while they’re in the bag to make them like it. if you start feeding him in the bag like a week before you go, he might be more okay with it.
