The Kindness of Strangers

Although I have shared my life with numerous pets for many years, I had never travelled any distance with them before I started spending school years in the arctic. Prior to that, coaching or capturing an unwilling pet into a carrier and taking it to the vet was the sum total of my travelling with pets experience. I find the whole process of putting my 2 cats and my dog on airplanes to be unbearably stressful. I am hyper alert to news stories (and urban legends) about dogs escaping from their carriers and disappearing forever, last seen running in panic around a runway. Or cat carriers that came out the luggage chute with no cat inside and the broken-hearted owner who flew back to her original destination and spent 2 weeks trying to find him. My worst fear is that my pets will get left behind in an airport, or worse, on a runway while I am flying off to my next destination. Maybe I see the carriers sitting on the runway as I take off, or maybe they get loaded on to the wrong plane. I am relentless in double and triple checking the whereabouts of those beloved critters. I watch out the window of the airport and am often able to see the two maroon carriers being loaded on with the luggage. When I get on the plane, I ask the flight attendant to to check again. So far, four trips from Nova Scotia to the high arctic have been accomplished without incident.You can probably guess what's coming. On this trip up, everything went fine from Halifax to Ottawa, with an overnite stay there. When I got to Iqaluit, the pets came off the plane and stayed with me for the 2 hour wait. All good. I was talking to some of the teachers at the airport, feeling very relaxed (probably too relaxed) and was a bit later than usual checking them through security. Everybody assured me they were through in plenty of time. When I was getting on the plane, I asked the people on the runway to have a look inside and confirm for me, which they did. I even stood up and asked the other passengers (very tiny plane) if they had pets on board. Nobody did, so, by process of elimination, they had to be mine. In spite of all that, I had a very strong feeling on the flight to Resolute that they weren't on the plane. When I stepped off the plane in Resolute, the local First Air rep was there to meet me. "Has anyone spoken to you yet?" he asked. By this time I had already been making plans in my head to find someone in Iqaluit to go to the airport to find the pets. My worst nightmare come true. However, a happy ending to the story. Two women (pet owners) who work at the First Air ticket counter took my pets home as soon as it was realized that the plane had left without them. They talked to me on the phone later that night and were incredibly kind to the animals who apparently enjoyed the sleepover and were shipped up to me on a charter flight the next day. I wonder if this will make me more relaxed on future flights because the worst thing happened and it turned out ok? First Air was very quick to be in touch, offer their apologies and provde financial compensation.