Molly's excellent adventure (2 of 2)

We pick up the story as I am trying to check my precious puppy in at the American Airlines counter like she is a piece of Samsonite luggage. Now I didn’t HAVE to check Molly. I had about 12 people offer to cart her across the country, but I just had visions of someone pulling a Mitt Romney on me, so check her I did. [you guys are just going to have to google Romney dog vacation, now aren’t you?]

One of my friends told me to cover the front gate of Molly’s crate with a towel so Molly couldn’t look around and get all freaked out. I thought it was a great idea – so I took borrowed a yellow pillow-case from Nicola’s house and covered the front gate with it. I have to confess – it didn’t so much look comforting as it looked like someone couldn’t be bothered getting window treatments. I think I just pimped Molly’s ride. [mother of the year]

When you are checking your dog in…they go through about 67 different rules with you…water within 4 hours…a trip to the vet within the last three days …twist ties on the front gate. And I can’t HELP but think…every single last rule was identified the hard way (i.e., trial.and.error). I wonder who owned the dog that identified the “clearly-mark-which-way-is-up” rule…yikes.

As I checked my bag…I mean my child…I saw ANOTHER dog in their crate going to LAX. Now, “Fi-fi” looked like she had made this.trip.before: the interior decorator had obviously stopped by the doggie “condo”. She was comfortably nibbling on her gourmet treat buffet and enjoying an honest-to-god doggie water bottle. Molly? She was gnawing on a stale carrot and trying to peer around her ghetto-ized window-sheet. And while I tried to engender baggage handler kindness by writing all these cute sayings on my dog’s crate…”I’m all bark and no bite.” [smiley face!] and “buy union”, Fi-fi just had half a $500 bill taped to the side of her crate. I think that about said it all. I later met met Fi-fi’s owner…gay man.

But the trip was truly uneventful…and now Molly is loose in Chez Rita.