Shipping a Pet???

[k_smittay]

Having an animal sleep the entire way through the trip is by far the easiest for them.

-Ken

Sedating your animal is so unsafe. Here is an article from the American Veterinary Medical Association.

http://www.avma.org/careforanimals/animatedjourneys/livingwithpets/sedate.asp

My dog has flown 6 or 7 times and has never had a problem in the cargo hold. No long term problems except for an amazingly long pee when we let him out of his kennel after landing.

 

[Navyfan06]

Well I am still deciding what to do... thanks everyone for your input. I think it would be better for her to have two hours of stress on the flight from Atlanta to San Antonio (followed by a 2 hour drive back to CRP) vice 13-15 in a car for a dog who hates extended car rides.

 

[et1nuke]

Also, I've found that rampers I see work hard to take care of the pets being shipped. There are, as mentioned above, some asses, but they are few and far between.

We saw a story in the news RIGHT before we were moving out here to Hawaii that got my wife really nervous. It was in Seattle and a woman shipping her dog watched out the window prior to boarding the plane. As she watched the handlers literally threw the kennel into the hold which ended up causing severe trauma to the animal (I think it broke some bones). The woman didn't board and went to whoever to put a stop to the whole incident and the guy had the balls to actually deny what she witnessed even though there was obvious evidence. In the end and a lawsuit later I read the airline (Alaska) didn't claim any responsibility because they outsourced the handling to another company.

I told my wife we have nothing to worry about though. Our dogs are too big to toss, hell they weigh like 80lbs each (two Weimaraners). We have had to positive experiences with flights less than 6 hours. Anyone have experience with longer flights, we're going to be flying soon from Hawaii to the east coast. I seem to remember it being more complicated on longer flights with sending food and all.

 

[helo_wifey]

We didn't have any problems when we shipped our cats cargo with United. United even guaranteed that if there was a long layover in San Fran they would take them to a kennel and feed them/let them out.

We put 2 baggies of food with each pet and was told to put an ice block in the water dish in the crate.

We paid $700 (approx) for them to be shipped cargo and were told it was climate controlled (they were shipped in August from Ontario, CA to Tokyo). I'd ship them with United again anytime, they had great customer service and the cats seemed fine (well, as fine as they could be) when they arrived.