Tuesday, December 3

“You okay, Scooter?” I asked. Scooter swung lightly in his soft travel crate held by the strap in my hand. We inched our way in a very long line to the TSA checkpoint. By this time, he had been in and out of his crate for more than three hours; mostly in. I needed assurance.

“Yawn,” he answered from his crate, chin resting on his fore paws.

 I’m the one who, at 3:00a.m., stood staring into darkness through our living room window, working out how to cancel this trip to Arizona. It’s crazy, traveling with a puppy, I thought. It won’t work, I was thinking. He will be miserable, surely. Or, grief, hopelessly hyper. I thought those things while that apricot-colored fuzz ball had been, as he was in the airport security line now, sleeping. 

On this, Scooter’s initial travel experience, we carry a Vet supplied “calming pudding” conveniently available in syringed doses ready to squirt into his mouth.

“Try it once a day or two before your trip,” she suggested. 

We did, Sunday, before Tuesday’s travel. We tried the “slip it into the side of his mouth” technique and discovered the “instantaneous slip it out with a quick squirm and shake” technique seemingly instinctive to fourteen-week-old-now 9.5 pounds Scooter. We followed his suggestion: forget the “slip it in his mouth” part. We shot the stuff into a small dish and watched him lap it up.

We waited the suggested 30 minutes to see if the boy sought sleep, or at least exhibited a zen-like calm. We waited as he threw his Lamb-chop toy around the room. We watched as he tossed or rolled or bounced his favorite empty plastic bottle under chairs or sofa and saw his tail-end disappear under furnishings, fast following his catapulted object; and upon finding it, he exited low spaces and sent said objects soaring again, crashing his pursuing self into the ancient, floor level French clay oven pots. 

“Give it an hour, maybe?” said my husband as we watched. 

Travel Tuesday—

Scooter watched with interest, Monday’s filling of suitcases. He wasn’t pleased with these attention grabbers. He could disable them, surely, if he pulled their innards out, if he relieved them of vital parts such as folded shirts or stacks of underwear. Scooter was a bit testy Monday, but come Travel Tuesday?

Into his soft crate he settled, zen-like. No meds. Sleep to the airport he did. Pee in the terminal’s outside pet place he managed to do, greet people with gusto he did, once freed from confinement at the security checkpoint. He walked on his own four furry feet through the long concourse. He scored! Sleep in his crate under seat 29E, he did, as I typed from seat 30E, my feet embracing the sides of his crate. I needed to feel his turns or stretches. No stress, no crying, only an occasional tail wag when my two fingers slipped through a zippered space to touch his head. The unused calming pudding syringes lay in a zippered crate pouch. 

Briefly, now, for your sake. It was almost over, this travel Tuesday. A 45-minute Lyft trip (including the driver’s dog occupying the front passenger seat) to our mountainside abode and we would settle: four suitcases, one hard crate wedged in my foot space (my feet propped and shifted to husband’s side), one soft travel crate containing a snoozing Scooter atop said hard crate; this, the pup who, after landing at Sky Harbor Airport had been fed, watered, run, and relieved at a great animal rest stop (don’t ask about the horrible “Pet Station” corner in SeaTac where neither Scooter nor I could bear the stench or cared to enter. I would hold him, he would hold his urges for a few more hours, bless him.)

I know, I know, part of my Tuesday wee hour anxiety conjured up images of airport accidents, Arizona snakes, coyotes, flying predators, cacti thorns, and all the possible pup dangers. But, here we were, in Anthem, Arizona. And, here they were—Javelina. Javelina? 

Indeed. A pack of them. Ugly, fierce animals my father hunted during my Arizona childhood. A large pack, accompanied by a slew of cute babies, foraging in the desert yard of the house we meant to enter this late, dark hour; meandering in the path required by us to transfer suitcases, kennels, selves, and crated dog (while I foraged for the house key I meant to bring from home but, seemingly, hadn’t). This was reality, not anxiety’s imagination. Marauding javelina, darkness, missing key, helpful driver honking a car horn in a quiet neighborhood and yelling at the beasts, iPhone flashlight aiding my fruitless search . . . But, that’s a different story. 

Scooter? Scooter could not have been happier, having awakened to the sounds of chaos. Chaos suits him. Javelina scattered, stacks of stuff got shifted into a house opened by a hidden key, pup got relieved in a secure backyard, his roomy sleeping crate got rightly situated in our bedroom, and he . . . he? He discovered the absent resident dog’s toys, played hard, drank water, then gave a tail-wagging, tongue-licking “Good Night,” before turning in to finish his needed 18-20 hours of daily sleep. 

Yawn . . .