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Alaska and Horizon now accept soft-sided in-cabin pet carriers

Until recently, Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air officially only accepted hard-sided in-cabin pet carriers (all other U.S. airlines that welcome in-cabin pets accept soft-sided carriers). Now, however, both airlines will allow you to bring your pet on board in a soft-sided carrier, and they’ve cut pet owners a break on the height: Soft-sided carriers may be 10 inches tall, 2.5 inches taller than the maximum allowed for hard-sided carriers.

To compare the Alaska/Horizon in-cabin pet policy with that of other airlines, take a look at Dog Jaunt’s handy guide.

New York Times’ “36 Hours” hotels: Pet-friendly or not?

Photo by maveric2003

Since 2002, the New York Times has regularly published quick snapshots of destinations in the U.S. and abroad entitled “36 Hours in [destination].” If you only had 36 hours to spend in Telluride, or Phuket, or Goa, what would you do? Where would you eat? The series sketches out brief visits, but the articles also work as the basis for planning a longer visit. I can’t tell you how many I have printed and stuffed into my travel files.

Each article concludes with two or three hotel recommendations. In November 2009 I had the bright idea of finding out if the recommended hotels are pet-friendly, and tweeting the results to @dogjaunt followers. Tweets come and go, though. I’ll keep posting them, but I’ve also started recording whether a “36 Hours” hotel is pet-friendly or not here on Dog Jaunt, so people don’t have to make the same phone calls and write the same e-mails I did. And as I find the time, I’ll fill in the ones I missed!

Chloe’s Clicks: Dog travel links we liked this week

This week’s Chloe’s Clicks starts with a link that knocked me out. It would never have crossed my mind to ask the Vatican Museum if Chloe could join us in a visit, but intrepid traveler Helen Fazio did just that — and was given permission to see the museum and Sistine Chapel with her Shih Tzu Raja. As Helen says, never be afraid to ask!

A world away from the Vatican, Christina Erb wrote a post for Outside.online about an exciting trail run in Wyoming with her dog Santos, who forgot his healthy respect for moose at a crucial moment. That link led me to a blog I’d never read before, OutsideK9 (the dog blog of Outside magazine). It’s packed with great articles about dog training, outdoor gear and outdoor activities. Grab a coffee (or a sports drink!) and check it out.

Teri Tynes of Walking Off the Big Apple posted a really useful article about walk-up windows in the greater Greenwich Village area where you can grab tasty food while strolling with your dog. Across the country, L.A. Unleashed posted a collection of reader videos showing their favorite Southern California dog parks and beaches. Switching coasts again, Bed & Breakfast Inns Online posted a guide to dog-friendly parks near the small town of Matthews in North Carolina (just outside Charlotte, NC). [The site, by the way, is a useful resource for finding pet-friendly B&Bs, but be sure to confirm that the inn you’re interested in really does accept dog — we found the Covington Inn through B&B Inns Online, and the innkeeper needed to be coaxed a bit to accept Chloe as a guest.]

People looking for dog-friendly rentals in Australia got some good news this week, when they learned that realestate.com.au now includes a pet-friendly search feature. Pet Friendly Rentals had the story, and is reworking its own search tool to take advantage of realestate.com.au’s new capabilities.

The GoPetFriendly team of Rod & Amy Burkert reported this week about a special kind of pet travel: Iraq War veteran Troy Yocum and PTSD therapy dog Emmie (a very lovely Shiba Inu) are walking across the U.S. together to raise funds for struggling military families.

On the dark side of pet travel, Christopher Elliott wrote an article about people smuggling dogs and cats onto planes and into hotels, or misrepresenting their dog as a service animal so that they can travel together. Argh! Stop that!

In his concluding paragraphs, Elliott expresses disbelief that dogs prefer to travel with their humans (rather than staying home), noting that his cats don’t like to travel. That is, of course, comparing apples and oranges. Our four cats loathe change, and I only require them to travel when we buy a new house. Our dog, a breed that demands human contact, wants only to be with us (also, she loves the smells in new places). For her, travel is a delight. I believe that, generally speaking, most cats prefer to stay home and most dogs prefer to be with their humans, but that there are pet-by-pet exceptions to both of those generalizations. Also, the calculus changes when, as is so often the case, the dog doesn’t stay home but instead is boarded at a kennel. A responsible pet owner will know her pet’s preferences, and act accordingly.

And on the very dark side of pet travel, reports are coming in that Israeli security services are requiring that dogs and cats of suspicious passengers be passed through the X-ray machines that scan carry-on items. I’m speechless.

I can’t leave you with that. Instead, take a look at these seriously goofy pictures from an airport in Vancouver, B.C. (scroll down to see Oscar in the jaws of death).

Photo Friday: Dog travel pictures wanted!

This week’s picture was taken earlier this year on the Madrid metro. Photographer Hipnos was impressed with this Boston Terrier’s stare, and so am I.

Small pet dogs are allowed on board the Madrid metro, but they must be in a carrier (which, you’ll note, this dog is not). Pet dogs are also allowed on the Cercanías Madrid, the city’s commuter rail service, but they must be leashed and muzzled (carriers are not required).

And yep, I realize he’s not wearing a muzzle either.

Photo by Hipnos

Please send me links to your favorite dog travel photos! They’ll get listed below, for everyone to click on and view. Here’s how it works:

  1. Every Friday, I’ll put up a post like this one, sometime during the morning (Pacific time).
  2. If you have a blog or a website, post a dog travel photo on your site on Friday and link back here to the current week’s “Photo Friday” post so that your readers can see other great dog travel photos. Please take a moment to make sure that you are linking directly to your photo post instead of your homepage.
  3. If you don’t have a blog or a website, simply post your photo to Flickr (or Facebook, Twitpic, etc.).
  4. Enter a link to your photo or your blog post in the form at the bottom of my post (if your URL is longer than 100 characters, you will need to use a URL shortening service, like bit.ly). That way, Dog Jaunt will link back to you. Please include a few words in the “Link Title” box describing where you took the photo.

Which seat works best with an in-cabin dog? [Delta DC-9]

Who knew that there were still DC-9s out there? It turns out that Delta has quite a few of these planes of my youth, though they’re likely to be retired in favor of more fuel-efficient alternatives. That’ll be a shame for Chloe, because the under-seat space on a Delta DC-9 has to be seen to be believed.

First Class has two seats on each side of the aisle, and Economy Class has two seats on one side and three seats on the other side of the aisle. As always, I only saw the First Class spaces in passing (but they looked promising, and this is not a plane that will be burdened with electronics boxes, even in First Class).

Your best choice on these planes is an aisle or middle seat. The height of the space is a generous 11.5 inches, and the depth (measured front to back) is a standard 17 inches. The aisle seat space is 20.5 inches wide, the middle seat space is an astonishing 21.25 inches wide, and the window seat space is a nearly-unusable 11.5 inches wide.

Please note that we sat on the three-seat side of Economy Class, so I don’t have measurements for the two-seat side. I suspect that the aisle seat space is substantial and the window seat space is cramped, but that’s a guess.

This post is part of an ongoing series recording under-seat measurements of the various planes we fly on. Keep in mind that most domestic and international airlines have rules about the maximum size of in-cabin pet carriers they allow on board (see Dog Jaunt’s handy charts under the “Taking your pet on a plane” tab above).

Winner of the Sleepypod Air pet carrier giveaway

Thanks so much to everyone who entered Dog Jaunt’s and Will My Dog Hate Me‘s giveaway for a Sleepypod Air pet carrier, and thank you to Sleepypod for sponsoring it!

We asked entrants to send us pictures of their dog’s “favorite toy or blankie — the one that you’d tuck into your dog’s carrier as you set off on a trip, because you know he loves it best,” and we told them that pictures including both toy and dog would get extra love. The pictures we received range from adorable to astoundingly adorable, and choosing a winner was painfully difficult. See for yourself! I’ve copied the links to the bottom of this post so you can enjoy them (please note that the last half-dozen or so were entries that were made by e-mail, so I posted them myself — which is why they all have a “dogjaunt” URL).

In the end, we just had to choose Truffle (entry #7), whose mom pulled out all the stops and created a page featuring Truffle and her toy bunny:

Congratulations, Truffle! Please send me or Edie your mailing address and your choice of color (Orange Dream, right?), and we will have Sleepypod send you your carrier directly.

And there’s more good news! Sleepypod felt our pain — heck, they were brought to their knees by your pictures too — and are offering the other entrants a 10% discount when they buy a Sleepypod Air pet carrier. At Sleepypod’s order page for the Air carrier, insert the following in the “Coupon Code” slot: FTC10. The offer is good until June 30.

In fact, Sleepypod is offering the discount to all readers of Dog Jaunt and Will My Dog Hate Me? — which they totally wouldn’t have done if you guys hadn’t sent in such great pictures of your wonderful pets. So thank you for entering our contest, and thank you for making this opportunity available to your fellow pet-owners!

Which seat works best with an in-cabin dog? [Delta 757-300]

Although I have nothing but bitter things to say about the space available for humans on this plane, Chloe seemed to have an okay flight.

Delta’s 757 (-300 series) planes are divided into First Class and Economy Class. I only caught a glimpse of First Class as I was walking through, but the under-seat spaces didn’t look impossible for an in-cabin dog. Economy Class has three seats on each side of the aisle, except for oddball Row 14 (which is an exit row anyway, so off-limits to travelers with pets).

Your best choice on this plane is a middle seat. The under-seat height (once you squish the life vest packet upwards) is 10 inches. As is so often the case, the depth (measured from just below your seat pocket to just behind the feet of the person in front of you) is 17 inches. The width of the under-seat spaces, measured left to right, is 17.5 inches for the window seat, 19.5 inches for the middle seat, and a mere 15 inches for the aisle seat.

This post is part of an ongoing series recording under-seat measurements of the various planes we fly on. Keep in mind that most domestic and international airlines have rules about the maximum size of in-cabin pet carriers they allow on board (see Dog Jaunt’s handy charts under the “Taking our pet on a plane” tab above).

Dog Jaunt’s one-year anniversary!

Photo by Theresa Thompson

Well, to be honest, it was yesterday (April 11), which makes today the infinitely more poetic “year-and-a-day” anniversary of my blog. It started as a place to collect a lot of information I’d gathered in the course of taking several trips with our brand-new puppy. I was an English major, so my first impulse is always to buy a Moleskine notebook and write stuff down — but my husband is a software guy, and he said “blog.” So I went forth and blogged, and in no time at all, writing blog posts was occupying nearly every waking moment.

There’s a lot to this blogging business, and I’m only just learning how much there is to learn. I’ve had excellent help (thanks, Walter!) and excellent advice (thanks, Delicious Baby!) — and excellent readers and blogging friends (thanks, dear ones!). I’m looking forward to Year 2.

Here are the top five Dog Jaunt posts from Year 1:

1. Airplane carriers for in-cabin pet travel — This was such a hit that I started a second blog, called Pet Carrier Reviews, and started posting lots more reviews there.

2. Airport pet relief areas — Pictures and reviews of the pet relief areas we’ve been to. Some are good (San Diego), some are great (JFK T5), some are desperately bad (Seattle, Las Vegas, Denver…).

3. and 4. Traveling by car with a small dog: Ready, set… and Traveling by car with a small dog: How it works — A darned useful pair of posts, if I say so myself.

5. Taking a small dog on a plane: How it works — The post that began it all. The very first thing I had to do with young Chloe was fly her from her breeder in San Diego to her new home in Seattle, and the Internet had nothing to tell me about the actual, moment-to-moment how-tos of flying on a plane with an in-cabin dog — so I blundered through on my own a few times, and wrote this post.

Chloe’s Clicks: Dog travel links we liked this week

This week’s first link makes me happy — it’s a standing ovation from Small and Chic in Cville for the very dog-friendly Hotel Palomar (a Kimpton hotel) in Atlanta, GA. Author Jeannine reveled in the doggie swag and pampering (as did Baxter the dog) and her pictures are fun.

Across the country, a Chandler, AZ restaurant is fighting to stay dog-friendly. Iguana Mack’s has allowed leashed dogs to keep their owners company on its patio for the past eight years — but in March, a health inspector issued a warning to the restaurant. Unhappy about the crackdown, and losing an estimated $1000 per week in revenues, restaurant management and customers are putting together a campaign to “try and get some sort of waiver or a policy change.”

That leads straight into the next link, a heads-up from ohmidog! that St. Louis just opened a new downtown dog park. Like other cities (remember a couple of recent Chloe’s Clicks reports about Santa Cruz?), St. Louis appears to recognize that dogs and dog owners are good for business.

Up in Anchorage, AK, the Anchorage Animal Care and Control Center’s Blog posted some very sensible tips for making your move to a new home easier for your pet. I also want to draw your attention to a resource mentioned in the post: A regularly-updated list, maintained by a not-for-profit called Friends of Pets, of pet-friendly rentals in Anchorage. Look for similar databases in your community, or in the community you’re planning to move to. Too many pets are brought to shelters when their owners move — resources and advice like that offered by AACCC can help keep pets and their people together.

I’ve written about dog-proofing a hotel room, and while my main concern will always be to keep Chloe from harm, I also have a strong interest in keeping her from harming hotel furnishings. My ears perked up, therefore, when I saw this post from Dog Spelled Forward about ways to keep your dog from chewing. There’s only so much that Bitter Apple can do, after all.

I’ll conclude with poop, yet again: This time, the buzz is about the flushable poop bags from Flush Doggy. The company swears their biodegradable bags are sturdy enough to contain poop reliably but will not clog your plumbing. They also point out that all of us well-meaning folks who use biodegradable poop bags but toss them in trash cans are wasting our time, since the bags will not break down in landfill conditions. Flushed, however, Flush Doggy bags and poop will break down like human waste. Intriguing!

Photo Friday: Dog travel photos wanted!

We took this photo a couple of days ago in downtown St. Paul, MN, where Woodstock reads a book over Marcie’s shoulder in bronze tribute to Charles Schultz (born in Minneapolis, raised in St. Paul). It’s a remarkably good picture, given what grave doubts Chloe had about being on the slatted seat.

Chloe, Marcie and Woodstock in St. Paul

Please send me links to your favorite dog travel photos! They’ll get listed below, for everyone to click on and view. Here’s how it works:

  1. Every Friday, I’ll put up a post like this one, sometime during the morning (Pacific time).
  2. If you have a blog or a website, post a dog travel photo on your site on Friday and link back here to the current week’s “Photo Friday” post so that your readers can see other great dog travel photos. Please take a moment to make sure that you are linking directly to your photo post instead of your homepage.
  3. If you don’t have a blog or a website, simply post your photo to Flickr (or Facebook, Twitpic, etc.).
  4. Enter a link to your photo or your blog post in the form at the bottom of my post. That way, Dog Jaunt will link back to you. Please include a few words in the “Link Title” box describing where you took the photo.