South America Drive

Miami Airport: Preparing dogs for flight to Uruguay

November 15, 2012

“This is terrible. We are at the airport and the dogs are a mess. I feel so guilty. Perhaps it was not such a good idea to bring the dogs. Next time sedation – for dogs and us!”

We felt so guilty putting Apex and Sedona through this

We felt so guilty putting Apex and Sedona through this

We arrived 2 1/2 hours before the flight was departing. American Airlines recommended this since we had to be at our gate 2 hours ahead of the flight.  The flight was a 9 hour non-stop flight from Miami to Montevideo, Uruguay. The dogs would be in their kennels for close to 12 hours. We were warned there was no quarantine service in Uruguay. According to the Embassy, if all of the paperwork was not in order, the dogs would be “put down.” We had spent the previous weeks doing everything we were told to — and more — to avoid problems on arrival. However, we still worried and discussed having the dogs immediately shipped back to the US if any problems arose.  Needless to say, this added a lot of stress.

To make it worse, we had not even left the US and the dogs were already a mess. Apex was shaking, Sedona was drooling and shaking violently. While filling out paperwork, I set a pen on Sedona’s crate…it fell off! Our vet discouraged sedation, but next time I would consider it. We seriously wondered if Sedona would have a heart attack: talk about feeling guilty. We plan an adventure… envisioning how wonderful it will be to have our dogs with us… we hated the idea of leaving them for such a long time. SO.. we put them through hell. We had tried to prepare them for the flight by having them sleep and spend extra time in their kennels during the previous 2 months. The worst moment was leaving them so we could get to our departure gate on time. Now, we just had to worry about customs in Uruguay!

We did it for views like this!!

We did it for views like this!!

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