I just arrived in Germany on the 3rd, last week! I was supposed to leave on September 18th. When I took my dogs to the vet on the September 12th for their final check up I found out for the first time during this whole process that there was some important paper work for the dogs that needed to be done before I could leave. No problem right? This paper work was the “International Health Certificate” that had to be mailed to Olympia to be endorsed and then mailed back. After receiving this news I realized that this would be cutting it to close. I then moved my plane flight to the following week on the 25th. On the 22nd I ended up having to take one of my dogs, Buddy, to the vet because he had some red bloody spots all over his neck. It started with 1 spot a week before then over the course of a week it had spread. The vet said that they needed to do a biopsy on him to find out what it was. They were thinking maybe a skin tumor was starting to form. Whatever it was it seemed serious................Then another 3 days went by for that. The results came back stating that he was having some kind of allergic reaction to something (not sure what). Then they permitted him to go to Germany! At this point I was able to book my flight for October 1st. My sister, Stephanie and I drove to Seattle the day before just to make sure everything would go smoothly on the 1st. My flight didn't leave until 1425 so we got to the airport at 1215 thinking we would check in my bags, and have about an hour to take the dogs on one last walk, then check them in and off to Germany we go. I was told at Fairchild to check in with United Airlines even though we were flying through a company called Lufthansa. So we parked in the garage near United Airlines, went to the United counter and they told us that we had to check in at the Lufthansa counter; which just happened to be way at the opposite end of the airport! At this point I was getting a little irritated, but didn’t want to stress myself out about it. That’s why we got there so early, so we could give ourselves time for the “run around.” It took us 7 minutes to walk from the United counter to the Lufthansa counter.............oh yeah we left the dogs and my carry on stuff in the car so it would be easier to carry everything else that needed to be checked in. We arrived at the Lufthansa counter @ 1300, still an hour and a half before the flight leaves. They start checking me in and ask where the dogs are. They told me I'm really pushing it to make my flight on time. So much for being early! So Steph had to literally run back to the car, get the dogs and bring them to me so we could get them checked in. She was back in 10 minutes sweating and out of breath. Whew! Ok, a little stress going on, but we're ok.................. THEN as they're trying to check me in they said that the tickets have not been funded! Fairchild never paid for them, even after I called them 5 days prior to make sure that everything was good to go and they said, "Yes Mrs. Berg, you'll check in at the United Airlines counter and everything has been taken care of." At this point, the time was 1315, the supervisor said that I wasn't going to fly out that day. I would have to wait until the following day! I'm sure you could imagine the furry that is running through me at this point. Shawn and I worked so hard to make sure that this day would run smoothly. I’ve already had to reschedule my flight twice, and now I’ve “missed” my flight! I couldn’t believe it. To make a long story a little shorter, I did end up having to leave the next day, on October 2nd. In the end, it was in my favor that this happened, I got to spend one more day with my sister, my best friend, my hairstylist, who I've always had around and am going to miss more than anything. This way we actually got in a satisfactory goodbye (if there is such a thing). Not to mention everything went very smoothly the next day. The employees knew who I was, we knew exactly where we were going, we figured out an easier way to check everything in all at the same time and didn’t have to make 2 trips to the car, and I wasn't leaving on such stressed out conditions.
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