Photo by jpcorreacarvalho

In an earlier post, I passed on a tip about surviving a long plane trip with your in-cabin dog: If she starts sending signals that she really, really has to go, carry her to the plane’s bathroom, spread out scented pee pads, and be sure to clean up afterwards. Finally I had to take my own advice — after a six-hour flight, we had only a half hour in Dulles to make our next flight, and there was no possible way to make it out to Dulles’ pet relief area and back. Off Chloe and I went to the handicapped stall. I laid out a couple of scented pee pads, let Chloe out of her carrier, uttered the magic command word, and…nothing. Poor dog had no idea what I was talking about.

Happily, she had sufficient bladder control to last another three hours until we reached Tampa — but the take-home lesson for me is to practice a bit with pee pads (and with the not-so-magic command word) before springing them on her again….