Pet Travel Blog

It’s a long way from Honolulu to Frankfurt for a passenger, but just imagine how long it is for a 14 LB cairn terrier.  This week I had a client’s dog depart Hawaii on Sunday and arrive into Germany on Wednesday.  Some real team work that goes into a pet’s journey like this one.  The owner or person shipping the pet must be sure that the paperwork is in perfect order and that the dog is prepared correctly for shipment.  Finding a crate in Hawaii was difficult so we had one sent to her from the mainland.  It is always advisable for the pet to become somewhat familiar with the crate before departure.  IATA shipping standards dictate that a pet can only travel so many hours and miles  consecutively.  The flight from Honolulu was almost ten hours to New York.  On arrival into New York we had a pet handler-another great member of the ‘team’- claim the dog and respite care it for 24 hours.  The dog was then rechecked in with the airline and forwarded on to Frankfurt; another 8 hours.  Total miles traveled: 8,817!  What a trooper.  When the dog arrived into Frankfurt, mom was waiting to claim her.  That is always the best part.

As a pet travel agent I get calls daily about putting pets in the ‘hold’ of the aircraft.  I know it sounds really awful, but actually if you plan well and use the right carriers, the experience is not too horrible.  Most pets just sleep through it.  No, you not sedate your pet. Sedation is the worst thing you can do for a traveling pet and the airlines will not accept a sedated pet.  It makes them feel funny and many times they panic and overheat which actually can be fatal.  Pets are more adapting that we give them credit for.  My advice: let mom and dad take the sedatives and ship the pet!

PET TRAVEL AGENT ADVICE FOR DUMMIES:

Never sedate a traveling pet.  The airlines will not knowingly accept a sedated pet for shipment.  A sedated pet can begin to feel strange and start to panic.  Sometimes they try and escape the crate and overheat trying.  If they get too hot and have no immediate water to drink they  can dehydrate and in the worst instance die.

The New York Sun published today an article about the Westminster Dog Show currently running in Madison Square Garden. http://www.nysun.com/article/48474
Bradley Hope who wrote the article is ‘right on’ about the fact that none of us have forgotten about Vivi.  What happened and how can we prevent this from ever happening to our own beloved pets?  From a pet travel agent’s perspective I have thought long and hard about Vivi and my take on what happened.  I honestly think that someone with the staff at the airport must have opened that crate door to get a look at this darling animal.  The suggestions in the Sun article are great.  I would like to add a few more.
Use an IPATA members – International Pet and Animal Transportation Association- http://www.ipata.com-to ship your pets.  IPATA pet shippers know their business.  They check your pet in with the airline, present required documentation for TSA and know the airlines that are the best with pets.  They also know the agents and individuals that handle the pets at the airports.  They really know what they are doing.  Puppy Travel is a member of IPATA. http://www.puppytravel.com
-If you are traveling with your pet, make sure that you advise the flight attendants as soon as you board the aircraft that you are traveling with your pet.  Ask them to have the pilot call down and advise the ground crew that he needs a call when the pet has been boarded.  Do not sit down in your seat until you KNOW that your pet has been boarded.  Don’t buckle up…just wait.  I have never had a client have a problem with this specific request.  Remember that the pets are the “last on & first off’ the aircraft so more than likely you will not be alerted that you pet is on board until just before the passenger aircraft door is closed.  Be patient.  They will do it. 
-Never take your eyes off your pet until it has been accepted and is the responsibility of the airline.  If you need to get your vehicle out of the parking lot before you can put the pet and crate in your car, PAY someone to watch it for you-a neighbor, friend, cousin.  It is money well worth spending.
-TSA should inspect your pet while you are still there.  Don’t release your pet to the airline until all inspections have been completed. 
-Ship you pet as ‘manifested cargo’ instead of ‘checked luggage’.  The airline ticket counter agents work mostly with humans-not animals.  They will treat your pet the same as your golf clubs or skis.  If you ship them as ‘manifested cargo’ you know where they are all the time because you can track them on the internet.  Checked luggage is what it is….’checked’…they have no idea what happens to it once they place it on the conveyer belt.
 

Being a pet travel agent is a very interesting job. There are positives as well as negatives, just like any profession. There are so few travel agents now that I sometimes wonder why I stay in this hectic and ever-changing business. I have always said that the only way a travel agent really learns their job is by making mistakes; that the difference between a good travel agent and a GREAT travel agent is the GREAT travel agent fixes their mistakes without anyone every knowing there were any!

I have decided to share with you on occasion some ‘Pet Travel Agent Advice for Dummies’. My own creative manual based on years and years of hands on experience.

Chapter 1:

#1: DOCUMENT EVERYTHING
There are so many unwritten rules in the industry and so often you will call a vendor and they will tell you one thing and then you call again, ask the exact same question and are told a totally different answer. Lesson learned: Remember and document who told you what and when; an actual name and date works wonders.
#2: NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING
The rules in the travel industry change faster than anything you have ever experienced. You may have sent a pet in cabin last month on an airline and everything went great. That is not a guarantee that the airline has not changed their policies regarding pets in the cabin now. If your client gets to the airport with Fluffy in tow and is told they no longer accept in-cabin pets you will be the first person they will call.

Lesson learned: Always verify and TRIPLE check any policies or information to be sure that nothing has changed.
#3: DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS
The travel industry has so many variables that sometimes you think you are going to go crazy. You try and think of everything you possibly can to avoid problems. You may spend weeks preparing a client and her dog to travel to South America. The requirements for the dog to enter a country can be very complicated and time sensitive. You get everything done for the pet exactly as is needed to avoid any problems with your client and the dog on arrival. You get the dreaded phone call from the airport-you focused hard on the pet and you forgot about the ‘human’ passenger. They need a Visa!

Lesson learned: You must try always to look at every minor travel detail. The airlines will not always take the time to tell you everything you must know. That is your job.
#4: TRAVEL AGENTS ARE NOT PAID COMMISSIONS BY THE AIRLINES
Travel Agencies used to receive a 10% commission baseline on every transaction ten years ago. The airlines first capped the sales commissions at 10% or $50 whichever was less and then they took them away completely. World wide airlines have not paid out commissions for a long time.

Lesson learned: Travel agents must charge fees for their services. You will need to pay for services received.

Imagine your pet, injured, bleeding, with hypothermia, soaked in urine and vomit with missing teeth or swollen gums or even worse killed. This is a harsh reality of travel on airlines for many pet owners.

Many airlines simply accept any standard small animal carrier, regardless of faulty mechanics or even missing hardware that easily harms and kills countless animals each year.

A simple search on airline reports will bring a shocking reality to the surface as the horrid tales unfold of injured, missing or killed animals that occur while traveling.

I have focused my travel skills completely on pet travel for the last 4 years and can honestly say that I have NEVER experienced anything like what is described above. The airlines have done nothing but continuously improve all aspects of their live animal and pet programs in the last 4 years. Some of the major carriers in the United States ship in excess of 50,000 pets per year. The FAA now releases monthly the number of incidents reported by the airlines in regard to live animal transport. This information can be found at http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/reports/2006/December/0612atcr.pdf
This last week I was shipping 3 pets to Argentina. One of the dogs was very old and had a heart murmur. The vet signed the Health Certificate but strongly cautioned that the journey was going to be hard on the dog. I of course advised the client in Buenos Aires and she was worried but authorized me to go ahead and ship her dog. At the airport the entire staff could not have been more concerned and helpful with this dog. I called the care center for the airport in Houston where the dog was to lay over for a few hours and then travel onward, to check and see how she was doing. They made a special phone call to where she was, checked on her and called me back. The dog arrived in good shape and is now home with its owner in South America. That is one of many experiences I have had shipping pets and dealing with the airlines.
For me as a pet travel agent and pet shipper, the proof is in the planning when sending animals any distance on a commercial carrier. You must be sure that you prepare the pet, and crate correctly. All documentation and paperwork needs to be exact and completed. No cutting corners! Use a professional pet shipper-pet travel agent-and you and your pet will be glad you did!

P.S. Don’t cut corners on anything! Especially on the crates!

Building Trust with Customers
“From an “on-line pet travel agency” prospective”
“

Who are you? Can I trust you? These two questions underscore all business transactions. But they are particularly important when it comes to conducting business on the Internet where face-to-face interaction is eliminated. On the Internet, it has been very difficult replicating the varying degrees of trust that businesses and individuals have with each other in the ‘real world.’” Liberty Alliance Project

The distribution of travel services has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. When I first entered the travel industry 23 years ago, 90% of all airline tickets were sold by travel agencies. You used your trusty travel agent to plan, book and issue your travel. It was a common thing to visit your travel agent, talk travel, look at brochures and purchase your trip. Times have changed. Most consumers today surf the internet in search of travel information and make the majority of their travel purchase ‘on line’. Many of the online travel sites are very informative and easy to maneuver. When I dreamed of owning my own travel agency 4 years ago, I knew that I needed to offer a service or niche in travel that could not be accomplished easily on the World Wide Web. I decided to become a ‘pet travel agent’ because you cannot book your pet’s travel unless you call the vendor or find a travel agent to do it for you. I knew that for Puppy Travel to be successful, my potential customers were not within a few miles of my office, they were all around the world. The challenge: to establish creditability with clients through e-mail and the telephone. People’s pets are now considered ‘part of the family’. Helping a person ship a pet is the same to me as helping them ship one of their children. It is a HUGE responsibility, one that requires a tremendous trust relationship between the client and the ‘pet travel agent’ -me. Building confidence is very important. I can help people plan travel with their pets or ship pets traveling alone. Sometimes I have ‘escorted’ pets to destinations and transported pets coming and going from the major airport in the city I live in. Just this week we had a client who needed us to pick up his daughter’s cat and ship it to him in Boston. Talk about trust. My employee [whom I would trust with anyone’s pet on the planet] drove an hour and a half to where the cat was to collect it. When she arrived, as luck would have it, the cat was not to be found. We both knew that the cat was ‘hiding’ and would surface eventually, but not on our schedule. I called and advised my client of the situation. Luckily he was cool about it. Twenty four hours later, we were called, told that the cat was back and to come back and get it. We did. Because the cat was to depart on a very early AM flight to Boston, I had to take the cat home for the night. The cat seemed just fine with coming to my home. I fed it, watered it and gave it a cozy spot to sleep for the night-away from 2 very curious dogs. At 5AM I packed up the cat, put it in my van and drove it to the airport to ship it. Bottom line-my client had to trust me with his cat and I had to trust the client and his cat. I have never met this client, will more than likely never meet this client but I know his cat very well. I have slept with client’s dogs, traveled with other client’s dogs half way around the world and driven in pouring down rain storms to deliver pets to wanting owners. Many years ago I heard the golfer Gary Player lecture on what his keys to success were. The only one that stayed with me was “there is no substitute for personal contact”. So the greatest challenge any person with an internet based company is to find a way to create some kind of ‘personal contact’ through email, and the telephone. One of my conditions on doing business with anyone is that I have to at least hear their voice and have a phone conversation before we begin pet travel services. Even if it means getting up in the middle of the night to call a potential client in Australia or Africa, it is worth it.

Besides the pets, the thing I love the most about my client’s is getting to know them and providing for them unparalleled pet travel service. When they trust me and I trust them it is a great thing for everyone-including Fluffy.

Holiday Flights that became ugly - Consider the pets!

Many read about the problems that American Airlines passengers experienced at the end of the Christmas Holiday season this year at Dallas Fort Worth airport. With airlines booked over capacity and extreme weather conditions, the delays and cancellations on the entire American Airlines systems were horrendous. No food remaining on board, aircrafts sitting on run ways for hours, over flowing toilets, diversions to alternate airports and very angry and frustrated travel stories were very upsetting for all travelers who read or heard them. I have to wonder but have not heard what the airline did about any pets that may have been on those flights. It’s one thing for your luggage to misconnect or not arrive until a day later-but what about your dog? If the aircraft sits on the runway for several hours before they decide whether to cancel a flight or finally get clearance for take-off, what about the pets? I happened to have had a client stranded at DFW airport that same weekend. She was returning to Albuquerque from a Canadian Dog Show with her 2 prize basenjis. She phoned me before she had departed Toronto and told me that it appeared that if she did get out of Toronto that evening she would surely misconnect at DFW and would need me to get some ‘pet friendly’ hotel options with a shuttle service for her & the dogs. That was the easy part! I left her options on her cell phone voice mail and did not hear from her for several hours. She finally called me when she got on the ground at DFW to advise me that she indeed had misconnected and would need to stay the night. Actually she said that they told her they could not confirm her on a flight to Albuquerque for several DAYS. She was exhausted and very concerned about her dogs. She said that if she had not tagged them herself at the ticket counter in Toronto, they NEVER would have made it. Luckily my client is extremely savvy really knows what she’s doing when traveling with pets. She had no food for her dogs because U.S. Customs would not allow any food attached to the dog’s crates coming out of Canada and she was feeding them ‘cheese and crackers’. Long story short, she ended up staying 2 nights at the Holiday Inn Airport in Dallas where they actually ‘cooked to order’ eggs for her dogs and treated her and the dogs well. She told me that there was no way she was going to go to the airport until some of the confusion had gone or she was afraid she may never see her dogs again! That is frightening!

So, what do the airlines do about pets on long delays? I think I need to find out.

There were some kind stories in the Wall Street Journal about passengers who flew low cost carriers Southwest Airlines and Jet Blue Airlines during this same period when American was having their problems. Southwest has a complete ‘no pets’ at all policy and Jet Blue will allow 1 pet per cabin on board only. If there is too much pressure on the airlines that allow pets to cater better to them and with the never ending ‘cost cutting’ they may just throw up their hands and ban them completely like the ‘low cost carriers’ do. You think you heard complaining and frustration during the 3 day holiday debacle with American Airlines, imagine what will happen if NO AIRLINES ALLOWED PETS to travel in the United States? What a scary thought. Let’s hope the pet friendly airlines continue to improve and consider the pets in all type of travel situations and that the pet traveling public appreciates their efforts.

“When you feel dog tired at night, it may be because you’ve growled all day long.” - Unknown

What makes a good travel agent? Do people use travel agents anymore and what in the world is a ‘pet travel agent’? Good questions! In my opinion a good travel agent is “worth their weight in gold’. Not only can they save you time and money but their experience and understanding of what is happening the in the world of travel is exceptional. So what does a ‘pet travel agency’ do that is different from a regular travel agency or that can just be accomplished on the internet? A PET TRAVEL AGENT does everything that a typical travel agent does plus adds pets to the mix. If you are traveling by airline with your pet, you cannot confirm it over the internet. Airlines have their own policies regarding pets and travel and they tend to change them without any notice. Here’s a simple example: You are flying on Delta Air Lines from Minneapolis to Miami and decide you want to ‘check your pet’ to travel with you on the trip. Your e-ticket information may read Delta Air Lines but actually you may be flying on a Northwest Airlines aircraft on one leg of the flight and on Delta Air Lines equipment on the connection. That’s not o.k. for your pet! The airlines do not ‘interline’ pets like they do luggage. If the airline you are planning to travel on has a mechanical and needs to send you on another airline at the last minute, the airline they reschedule you for may have a ‘no pet policy’. You arrive in Miami and the internet booking site said that the hotel you are planning to stay in accepts pets but you find out at check-in that you are required to pay a $250 non refundable deposit when staying with a pet and they only put pets in ‘smoking rooms’. Add any international destination to pet travel and you enter an entire new arena of travel challenges. That is why you will find it to be so worth the money to hire a ‘professional’ to do your pet travel arrangements. Do your due diligence, hire someone who has expertise to take care of your needs and your budget and of course if you are traveling with Fido, make sure you work with someone who loves dogs like you do!

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” ~ Anatole France