Faux Paw

Oy vey! Yes, we have arrived safely in Paris but I must rewind the tape a bit to tell you about our adventure at Newark airport. Let me start by saying that I have always been more worried about Chloe's trip than our own. It's very difficult to get information on brining your pet abroad and there are different rules for different countries and different airlines for your pet to immigrate to another country. So I did the best I could. We get to the airport and give Chloe her doggie downers right before we get out of the car. When we get to the counter the man in charge starts asking a series of questions: Do you have the proper crate? Yes. Do you have her rabies vaccination papers? Yes. Does she have her microchip? Yes. Has she been tranquilized? Yes. Wait...what? Yes, she has been tranquilized. I'm sorry but she can't go on this flight if she's been tranquilized. Oh Crap! So major a panic occurred: Can someone pick her up? Do we not go until tomorrow? Do we go and have her shipped later? Can we make her throw up? We offered to sign wavers, to leave and come back in and lie, anything to get her on the flight with us! (BTW, no one EVER mentioned this to me! Apparently, it is stated on the Continental web site on their check list page but when I asked them about the check list on the phone they said not to bother with the check list, it doesn't apply to international travel. So silly me, I listened to them and never looked at it.) To their credit they were looking out for her safety and said that they'd lost too many animal that way. Many phone calls later and finally a visit by the supervisor, they agreed to let her stay in the kennel at the airport (and waive the kenneling fee) They would ship her the next day on the same flight, we would just have to go back to the airport to get her. So we said our aurevoirs and left her there. The next day Ethan called the airport in Paris to see if he could pick her up around noon and they said of course, they could keep her all day, pas de probleme! Well, when he got there at noon (his friend Dan Antoine took him in his car, thankfully, otherwise he never would have found the holding area, which is not exactly at the airport but some industrial park a mile or 2 away) they were closed for lunch. Usually, they are not closed for lunch they explained but today they were. Ethan and D.A. went to IKEA for a while, had some meatballs and lingonberry juice, shopped and went back to get Chloe at 3pm. Ethan said the crate was all taped up so she probably wasn't let out since she left the US, until he got there at 3pm, la pauvre! Finally they arrived home at 5. Chloe is slightly traumatized (wouldn't be the first time) but I think she'll recover. I'll write more about our settling in in the next blog but for now I'll say that the apartment is nice (fairly large for Paris) and in a quiet neighborhood with lots of good shopping (food shopping, much to Lili's chagrin). Next post: L'apartement!