Chloe’s Clicks: This, um, month’s best dog travel links
Holy cats, this Chloe’s Clicks is way overdue! I’ll just plunge in with the oldest link in the collection, a post about a private jet company in the U.K. that invites your pet to join you in the main cabin. On the plus side: Your pet’s with you in the main cabin, and she has her “very own leather-upholstered seat, strapped in for safety, all while enjoying a window view.” On the minus side: If you have to ask, you can’t afford it (though “pets under eight inches tall or weighing less than six and one half pounds” fly for free).
In the Places to Go category, we have posts about dog-friendly hotels in Palm Springs, CA; a positive (of course!) review of Philadelphia’s Hotel Monaco (pet-friendly, like all the Kimpton group hotels); and a video report about dog-friendly restaurants in Houston, TX (I hate video reports too, but this one is only 1:43 long). Here’s the article mentioned in the video report, by the way, and here’s the link in it to the list of 33 Houston restaurants with officially-approved dog-friendly patios [PDF].
Gigi Griffis and her dog Luna are still in Perugia, Italy, and Gigi’s making it easy for you join them by writing a post about how to take your dog to Italy (also not to missed — her article about three “unexpected benefits of traveling with a dog“). Right now my favorite posts about foreign pet travel are from the blog (new to me!) Zadigloves, written (in French, but people who don’t speak French should not despair — this is where Google Translate shines) by Parisian pup Zadig for his “amis à pattes.” The link I’ve provided takes you to a review of Paris’s Parc Montsouris — poke around the blog and you’ll find more park and restaurant reviews.
The Take Paws team is on the move again, and their latest travel post is about Texas’s Hill Country — the picture of Buster flinging himself into the San Marcos River fills me with joy. Montecristo, too, has been traveling, and I was charmed by his report from Miami, FL. Monte also wrote a very sensible post about staying safe while driving in a convertible. God meant for dogs to frisk happily from side to side in the back seat, and lean blissfully into the sun and wind, didn’t S/He? Not so much, says Monte, and he’s quite right.
For those of us who need to stay home and punch the clock, check out this post about Boston’s dog-friendliest workplaces. Speaking of home, here’s a post from the wonderful DoggieStylish about sewing a custom dog crate cover — I’ve bought two (both boring beige) and used a too-large beach towel for a third, so this is an article I need to study.
On the worrisome front, the AKC reports that dognapping (“out of cars, yards, off sidewalks and even out of shelters”) is on the rise — they recommend microchipping (here’s my post with info about chipping) and not leaving your pup tied up outside while you run in on an errand.
I’ll leave you with a call to arms from Travels with My Dog — Helen and Raja argue that it’s only fair for traveling pets to have an airside pet relief area, given the fees extracted by airlines for pet travel. Some airports do (I’ve been to airside, as opposed to landside, pet relief areas in Seattle’s airport and Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport), but most don’t. I’d be thrilled to see more airports hop on board, and it would certainly make the lives of people traveling with service dogs (the intended beneficiaries of the legislation that requires U.S. airports to have a pet relief area) easier if they didn’t have to exit the airport and reenter through security to give their service animal a bathroom break.