The website for New York’s LaGuardia Airport refers to the airport’s pet relief areas, but doesn’t provide any details about how to find them: “All passenger terminals at the Port Authority’s airports provide these areas to conform with the federal Air Carrier Access Act, which mandates such areas for service animals who travel with air passengers. Signs featuring the international symbol for pet relief designate the areas.”

We recently flew out of LaGuardia on Delta, so this post is about the pet relief area at the Delta terminal (Terminal D). If future trips take us (or you!) through other LaGuardia terminals (A, B, C), I’ll update this post.

LaGuardia Terminal D

As you approach the exit doors in the baggage claim area, you’ll see these signs, telling you the pet relief area is near the taxi stand:

The taxi stand is well-signed — you’ll find it to the right, at the end of the sidewalk. The pet relief area is just beyond it, across a small roadway and accessed by a painted crosswalk:

The pet relief area is in the distance, between (and beyond) the man in the blue jacket and the woman in the blue t-shirt

Tragically, what you find when you reach it is a tiny, squalid area marked off — but not enclosed — by a three-sided blue fence. There are no poop bags, no trash can, and certainly none of the features of the best pet relief areas (like a complete fence, a bench, or a water source).

"Please clean up after your pet," the sign says -- but with what? No poop bags, no trash can. This is a nearly useless pet relief area.

The only thing sadder than this wretched pet relief area is the area just to the north of it that some of the taxi drivers have set up for their prayers — prayer rugs neatly laid out in a line on the dirt, screened (with a strong effort of the imagination) by a low row of miscellaneous plastic crates. Surely the Port Authority could provide a location for prayer with some degree of beauty, if not peace?

You’ll pass by the prayer nook on the way to your best pet relief alternative: Leave the official pet relief area behind you on your left and walk down the sidewalk away from Terminal D and alongside a parking lot that, in this picture from Google Maps, is full of taxis (in the Google Maps shot, the official pet relief area is directly under the junction of the two overpasses that meet in the lower right corner). At the end of the sidewalk, you’ll find a useful wedge of grass. Bring your own poop bags, of course (you’d have to anyway, given that the pet relief area is bare of all amenities).

In this view, Terminal D is behind me, and the big parking lot (sometimes full of taxis) is on my right. Please note the extremely convenient trash can.

The building in the (not very far) distance is Terminal C, so this patch of grass would be a workable alternative for that terminal as well (exit the baggage claim area and turn left to find it).

This post is part of an ongoing series of reviews of airport pet relief areas we’ve visited. To see others, visit Dog Jaunt’s handy guide to airport pet relief areas.