BevLive: Hebrides, Day One

Editor’s Note: Bev Lambert and Sue Schoen are traveling with their dogs from the northeastern United States to the Hebrides islands off the coast of mainland Scotland. I asked them both to blog about their experiences with the dog trials over there, so we can all live vicariously. Wifi might sometimes be difficult to come by, but they’re going to do their best tto tell us about their adventures. Thanks, Bev and Sue, and good luck!

Sue did all the work on this trip. She made reservations at the B&Bs and for our many ferry rides and completed all the lengthy paperwork. Since we decided to each bring two dogs, it was volumes. Can’t help but think the British don’t really want our dogs there.

We met at my house at noon for our 8:00 flight from Newark, NJ, thinking we would spend hours hanging around the airport. We were concerned traffic might hold us up, since we needed to drive through NYC to get to Newark from my home in central Connecticut.

Turned out traffic was no problem. On our second pass through the airport we parked next to the United Airlines Pet Safe office and spent 45 minutes in the hot sun putting our crates together (we’d needed to take them apart to fit them into Sue’s car).

We then spent two hours with the very nice people at Pet Safe doing paperwork. That was with everything in perfect order, no problems.

Took the car to long term parking, checked our luggage, had a quick bite to eat and our flight was called. Who would have guessed it would take almost four hours to check four dogs and two suitcases?

Then we sat. Three hours at the gate while they decided one of our engines wouldn’t make it to Scotland. Glad they figured it out in New Jersey!

Finally gone at 10:30. Poor dogs–what a long time in their crates. Flight was six hours of torture trapped in those awful seats but we were on our way to ten days to dog trials in the Hebrides.