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Pet relief area at Chicago’s Midway International Airport (MDW)

Chicago’s Midway airport is so much more pleasant than O’Hare, and here’s one reason: There is a pet relief area, and you can easily find it. The airport’s web site is fairly useless (“The Animal Relief Area is curbside, on the lower level.”), but the airport itself was well-signed. Incredibly well-signed, in fact — some airports will grudgingly give you a sign or two in the baggage claim area, but Midway’s signs started on the arrivals concourse. Outstanding! I brought traffic to a halt while I took a picture:

You’re left to your own devices at some crucial points in the terminal, but once you reach the baggage claim area, the signs return in force. While you can exit any of the baggage claim area doors and find signage pointing you in the correct direction, the most efficient thing to do is locate Door 4 (near Baggage Carousel 8), exit the terminal, and turn right. Walk just past the bus stop, then turn right along the side of the building.

This is a dark picture, but it gives you an idea of where to look for the pet relief area.

What you’ll find, alas, is not that impressive. Midway’s official pet relief area is a small, fenced area. On the bright side, it has a bench, but the ground cover is large rocks and a really large concrete pad. What were they thinking? I know the answer — they were thinking “easy to clean,” but neither surface is particularly inviting to dogs.

Concrete? Really? There was one forlorn patch of pee on it, but a lot of dogs really dislike concrete.

Poop bags are provided, so if your dog prefers grass, grab a bag and take her to the grass patch beyond the pet relief area.

The official pet relief area is in the foreground of this picture. There's a useful bit of lawn across the roadway, next to the parking garage.

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.

Photo Friday: Chloe at another letterpress studio

I’m lucky to live in Seattle, where there are several places to learn how to do letterpress printing. You’ve seen Chloe before at Pratt Fine Arts Center’s studio, and this week she kept me company at the School of Visual Concepts‘ studio:

This picture was taken at a very jaunty angle indeed. In fact, Chloe was lying on a flat surface.

This time, she snoozed away in her Pet Dome, which we’re using a lot more than I thought we would (Chloe and the cats like it as a home retreat, and Chloe’s slept in it at my husband’s workplace).

I’d love to see how you and your pup spent your time together this week — please post your photos on Dog Jaunt’s Facebook page so we can all see them!

Reader’s report: Europe’s Student Agency buses are dog-friendly

My friend Nancy sent me word from the Czech Republic that the Student Agency buses are dog-friendly, and attached a picture to prove it:

Fellow passengers on the bus from Karlovy Vary to Prague

The website has more details: Pet “animals may be transported only when placed safely in carrying cases, cages or bags with waterproof bottoms, which are designed for animals. Animals carried in this way are transported for free and they travel on passenger’s lap or under his/her feet and must remain in the carrying case, cage or bag during the whole journey.”

Image from the Student Agency Bus site

I’ve never traveled by Student Agency bus, but the words “student” and “bus” make me think of those bone-shaking clunkers I used to ride in when I was young. Not so — Nancy tells me that the buses are very nice (you can see one in the tiny picture to the right) and very reasonably priced — and you can book travel on-line. The buses run between Prague or Budapest and destinations in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Slovakia, Sweden, and Switzerland (the map on the home page indicates that the buses also go to Austria, Poland, Romania and the Ukraine).

Pet Airways adding Texas destinations

Great news in my in-box this morning! Pet Airways, the pets-only airline (your pet travels in a carrier in the body of the plane, not underneath, and the flight attendants bring her drinks and peanuts) (I made that last part up, but they do check on your pet every 15 minutes) has added three destinations, all in Texas, to its list of flight cities. Flights to Houston, Austin and Dallas will begin this summer to all destinations in the Pet Airways network. Pet Airways will open reservations to these cities sometime this spring.

Currently, Pet Airways flies between the New York City area, the Washington D.C./Baltimore area, Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Ft. Lauderdale and Atlanta. I wait impatiently for Seattle to be added to the list.

Dog Jaunt’s second anniversary!

It’s been two years now since I hit the “publish” button on my first Dog Jaunt post. Since then, I’ve written over 550 posts (and some of you have written posts for me!), and I still haven’t run out of things to say about traveling with a small dog. Happily, too, I still think that traveling with Chloe is way more fun than traveling without her. Our most ambitious trip with her to date, to Paris for a two-week visit, was Chloe’s first trip abroad, and, hands-down, our best trip ever to the City of Light. Visiting with Chloe made me and my husband feel a little like we were locals, prompted us to walk even more than we usually do around a city that rewards pedestrians with beauty and interest at every step, and brought us into contact with lots of pet-owning and pet-loving Parisians. We noticed The Chloe Effect most vividly in Paris, but we feel it wherever we go.

What else happened this past year? I pulled up my socks and got Dog Jaunt’s Facebook page going, and now over 300 of you have “liked” it. Thank you so much for your comments on the blog and for your posts and comments on the Facebook page — they provide encouragement and information to people who are considering making their first big trip with their dog, and I love hearing your thoughts and seeing your pictures.

I also posted Dog Jaunt’s first-ever video report, which was a hoot, and spoke about dog travel on the radio and in my first-ever podcast — also great fun, but a bit nerve-wracking.

In the coming year, I hope to post more video reports — I’ll keep them short, and I promise to provide text as well, for those of you who don’t like video clips. I have an iPhone app in mind, and I hope that this year Dog Jaunt will start earning its keep through ads, etc.

Two years ago, I had no idea what I was getting myself into — thank you for all your help and support, and for your company!

Photo Friday: Truffles and the coconut

Remember reader Patty, who reported this week on her e-mail exchange with Toronto’s Pearson airport about the location of its pet relief area? Here is Truffles, her nine month-old Havanese — and a wedge of fresh coconut. It turns out that Patty and Truffles live in paradise, or, more precisely, the Abaco Islands, in the northern Bahamas. Patty’s husband chops open coconuts with a machete for Truffles. She eats it, Patty told me, “unless she is full, in which case she will ‘bury’ it under her towel in her crate, or in my shoes in the closet… But generally she scarfs it down.”

What have you and your dog been up to this week? If you have a photo, please post it on Dog Jaunt’s Facebook page so we can all enjoy it!

H2O4K9 reprise: The smaller water bottle

Just over a year ago, I reviewed H2O4K9’s gorgeous new water bottle for dogs. I loved some of its features, particularly its flat bottom and the way it can be hooked onto a belt loop or bag with a carabiner. On balance, though, it didn’t convince me to change over from the Gulpy dog water bottles we’d been using. Since then, H2O4K9 has come out with a water bottle targeted at small dogs, so naturally I had to buy one.

Photo by H2O4K9

Once again, I bought it in the irresistible Tree Frog Green. It has many of the same features as the bottle I reviewed (once again, I like the flat bottom and the stainless steel body), and it has some improvements, from a small-dog perspective (in particular, the lid is smaller, and less daunting as a drinking bowl). I find its diminutive size (it holds 9.5 oz. of water) convenient for short walks, but it wouldn’t be a good choice for a day’s outing or a long hike.

An observation, neither negative or positive: The Thermos-like screw top occupies a large part of the lid, and limits the depth of the water bowl you offer your dog. Another observation, tending towards negative: Unlike the Gulpy, an H2O4K9 bottle can’t be shared with your dog, because the water she’s drinking and slobbering into bathes the lid insert. A final observation, pretty negative: Unlike the 25 oz. bottle, whose molded plastic lid includes a loop that can easily be hooked by a carabiner, the plastic loop on the 9.5 oz. bottle’s lid is hard to access. The company provides a carabiner, but it’s small and wimpy (I’ve already destroyed it, in fact, in the process of orienting it with the smaller part of the oval downwards). I own a clutch of sturdy carabiners, but a normal-sized carabiner can’t reach the blasted loop. Given that the carabiner attachment is one of the things that distinguishes H2O4K9’s products from its competitors’ water bottles, the company should have given more thought to its lid design.

I’ll keep this water bottle (I gave the last one away to a friend with a Great Dane), and I’ll use it in certain circumstances, especially if I manage to find a good-quality replacement carabiner, but the Gulpy water bottle hasn’t been toppled from its #1 position. [5/4/11 Today I found a great replacement carabiner at REI — it’s an S-Biner, in fact, so it’s super-convenient to use, and it’s made by Nite Ize. The size #3 works well. Mine is stainless steel, but the only Amazon link I can find for you is to the black version — which I should have gotten, because it would look nice against the black lid.]

Amazon links:
H2O4K9 Stainless Steel Dog Water Bottle and Bowl (9.5 oz)- SILVER
Gulpy Water Dispenser 20 oz
Nite Ize S-Biner #3 – Black

Reader’s report: Pet relief area at Toronto’s Pearson Airport (YYZ)

Reader Patty, planning a trip from Nassau, in the Bahamas, to Victoria, B.C., sent me an e-mail and told me that she’d seen my posts about U.S. airport pet relief areas and wondered if Toronto’s Pearson International Airport had a designated pet relief area. The Pearson website is silent on the topic, so she wrote to the airport and asked. Here’s what she learned:

“While there is no designated dog relief facility at Terminal 1, passengers may take dogs to a grass area located outside the terminal building via the Ground level.  From within the terminal you would make your way to the ground level and exit outside of vestibule door “S”.  In order to access this grass area you will need to exit the secure area of the terminal and go through passenger security screening prior to your connecting flight.”

Patty was sad to learn that the pet relief area is on the land side of security, since, in her experience, Pearson is a cruelly long airport and it’s likely to take more time than she has to make it out to the pet relief area and then back in through security. Her trip hasn’t happened yet, so she couldn’t tell me how her layover went, but I thought it’d be helpful to travelers transiting Pearson to know where to look for a patch of grass.

Chloe’s Clicks: This week’s best dog travel links

It’s all about the destinations this week. I’ll start in New England (well, -ish, because the article touches down all over the United States, but it starts in New England) with a PDF from Fido Friendly about ten lovely and dog-friendly B&B inns (when the link comes up, click on the picture to reach the article, in PDF format).

Moving clockwise around the U.S., PetsWelcome.com posted a useful list of fenced dog parks in Raleigh, NC, the Take Paws team visited Amarillo, TX and has heaps of dog-friendly suggestions, and Luxury Travel Magazine profiled a book by Maggie Espinosa (called “The Privileged Pooch: Luxury Travel with Your Pet in Southern California,” and published in 2010), and listed some of the SoCal luxury options you’ll find when you pick up a copy. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the Seattle Weekly, God’s blessings on it, published a list of five dog-friendly Seattle bars.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a pilot program at a handful of Oregon state parks, allowing visitors with dogs to stay in a yurt and some cabins. Just recently, Beth Wilson, from Oregon Parks and Recreation, sent me an e-mail telling me that Oregon has expanded the program considerably: Now, the roster of dog-friendly lodgings includes “13 cabins and 20 yurts in 21 Oregon state parks. Reservations open[ed] April 1, 2011 (no April Fools’ joke) for stays beginning Jan. 1, 2012.” The options I mentioned in my earlier post are still available in the meantime.

I got a press release telling me that TripsWithPets has improved its web site to include, among other things, pet-friendly lodgings in Canada as well as the U.S., and the option of entering your planned route and receiving relevant pet-friendly lodging, eating and activity suggestions. Both bring it in line with its competitors, but while I’ll need to wait until May to check out the “Search by Route” feature, I can report that right now, Go Pet Friendly and Bring Fido are doing a more complete job with dog-friendly Canadian hotel listings. No doubt TripsWithPets and PetsWelcome.com and DogFriendly.com will catch up, inventory-wise. In the meantime, I have to praise TripsWithPets’ presentation, which is clear and well-designed.

Amazon link:
The Privileged Pooch: Luxury Travel With Your Pet In Southern California

Pet relief area at John Wayne/Santa Ana/Orange County Airport (SNA)

When we were visiting dear friends in Orange County last spring, I told them I was trying to pin down where the Santa Ana airport pet relief area was, because the directions on the airport’s web site were unclear (they’ve been improved greatly since then). They drove us to the airport, and then repeatedly through the airport, while I threw myself from side to side trying to spot the elusive pet relief area — and they did all that without ever suggesting that I was a complete wacko. Sadly, all our efforts were unsuccessful, so when we returned to SoCal last month, I drove myself to the airport and continued my search on foot.

Here’s what you do: From the main floor, take the escalator down to the baggage claim area. Locate the door leading to “A1 Parking” and exit. Walk past the big beige modular building you’ll see, and then look to the right. You’ll see a small, fenced pet relief area tucked against the side of the parking garage. It’s visible from the airport roadway, it turns out, but you have to know it’s there to see it.

I've included Chloe for scale.

The surface is Astroturf, and there’s both a fake fire hydrant and a real palm tree for male dogs to pee on. Poop bags are provided. It’s not terribly impressive, but it’s the best you can do at Santa Ana. I searched for alternatives, but there’s not a scrap of grass anywhere (there are several planting areas, but they’re packed with shrubs).

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.