To ship or not to ship, that is the question.
The media is full of stories about animals that die in the hands of airline employees. The picture is painted where airlines are a black-hole and whatever young and unsuspecting puppy, dog, cat, or other animal goes in, will never come out.
I want to keep this brief, so let me explain. Everyday, there are thousands of pets being shipped across this great land of ours. As with the law of averages and risk, there are occasional times when mishaps occur just like people have car accidents, etc. If we consider the number of pets traveling and how many have mishaps, we realize that our beloved pet traveling on an airplane is very safe.
Our experience at Sunshine Acres has been very positive with the airlines we use. We have interacted with very courteous, friendly, and pet-loving people. Many of them are pet owners themselves and wish to share about their own.
In the 15 years that we have shipped our puppies, we have never lost a puppy. I can think about about 5 instances where our puppy did not make it to the destination due to inclement weather or a missed connection. The airlines really are that good.
I have traveled with my puppies and have watched how they are handled when no one knew I was watching and all I saw was careful conduct and friendly faces.
Our Goldendoodles are socially trusting and experience little stress from traveling. Of course there is some. Golden doodles, like other dogs, are a little nervous with change. I liken it to the jitters we experience with the first day on the job, or first days of school. It is not long and we are into a routine and that jitterbug goes away.
So I guess, the take home message on shipping your puppy, is it is not a really big deal. Shipping a puppy is safe. It provides a quick way to get a puppy from point A to point B, while minimizing the travel time. Airlines with pet carrying services, really do care and put people in place that like pets.
I just wanted to add that we recently adopted a puppy from Sunshine Acres (on June 3rd, 2015) and I was HIGHLY ANXIOUS about shipping our puppy. Our puppy arrived not only unscathed but hopped out of her kennel and jumped onto my son’s lap licking and wagging…not in the least frightened or intimidated by the LONG day she had just endured. In our case, the flight from Chicago to Pittsburgh was delayed at the last moment and increased her travel time by about 2 hours, which I confess, reduced me to tears. MY anxiety over shipping her was VERY significant!!! This post was TRULY written for new owners like me…Having NEVER done this before, I want to assure those thinking about “shipping” a puppy that the experience was just as described and the puppy truly did NOT arrive the emotional wreck I had imagined she would…She was calm and happy and slept the ENTIRE trip from the airport in my little boy’s lap!!! He was thrilled and so were we!!! We chose to “ship” her primarily because we felt the drive from Indiana to PA would have been longer and frankly more dangerous having to stop in unfamiliar areas to allow her “potty breaks”. We would ship our baby again in a heartbeat and will certainly return to Sunshine Acres when we are looking for another pup…It was tough to imagine a little puppy all alone being “shipped”…but it was a FANTASTIC experience…NO HESITATION!!!