Travel with a service dog

The last time I wrote, I talked about flying with a service dog. Now it's time to talk about the actual trip!

A few weeks ago, my service dog Kaline and I headed to Michigan with my mom (retired girl Juno went for a "spa week" of frolicking on beaches with her Auntie Sonja). It's a tradition for us to go to Ann Arbor every fall, where we visit the Henry Ford and Greenfield Village to celebrate Hallowe'en, and attend the University of Michigan's fall musical.

When we landed in Michigan that Tuesday, our first objective was the terminal's service dog relief area. Kaline loves to do momentum pull, which involves some elements of guiding when there are crowds. The Detroit airport is one of his favorite venues. It's always a straight shot from our gate to the relief area, but with many delightful challenges in our way. It's always great fun to see him assess crowd shapes, the placement of clusters of people, and decide which path offers the least resistance to us. According to my mom, the people in our wake were pretty impressed.

Our hotel in the fall is actually pet friendly, and has a long strip of lawn behind it for running a dog or playing fetch (plus unlimited free poop bags!). After unpacking, the first thing I did was have a game of Chuckit with Kaline out back. Trips are tiring for both of us—at home, he never spends as much time officially on duty as he does when we're traveling. The best way to keep him spunky and fresh, oddly, is by having at least one vigorous game of Chuckit every day. Service dogs really need their time to be ordinary, rambunctious, ridiculous dogs. Kaline runs like a maniac for his Chuckit balls!

One of the best but most challenging parts of our fall trip is the time spent at Greenfield Village in Dearborn. The village is one of the foremost history attractions in the U.S., containing numerous historical buildings as well as replicas that Henry Ford collected from all over the country.

In the village are multiple horse-drawn omnibuses, Model T Fords, antique Ford buses, and steam locomotives. The locomotives are extremely loud, as they have to obey the state laws governing trains, even though they just go in a small loop. Therefore, their whistles have to be audible three miles away. Kaline has had to get acclimated to all of them, and since we are only there twice a year, it usually takes him a little while at the beginning to relax fully in the presence of all these things.

Showing our Hallowe'en spirit! Well, Kaline, anyway.

This was the first time he had no acclimation period! He's been going to the village since he was 16 months old, so maybe it's become old hat to him. It's lovely when we see some of the village presenters who remember him from his first trip—they can see how far he's come since then! Half the Model T drivers know him now; when we wait in line to ride them, the driver we're paired with inevitably lets out a joyful cry of "Kaline!" as we're about to get in.

Kaline on the Model T.

When we were the only ones on a particular horse-drawn omnibus, the driver let Kaline rest his chin on the window between the carriage and her driver's seat as she told us about her team, Wilbur and Orville. On the locomotive, he just objected to holding a down on the icy cold metal floor (can't really blame him). Kaline also enjoys riding the carousel.

Kaline on the horse-drawn omnibus.

Another challenge of the village in the fall is our favorite special event, Hallowe'en Nights. We go to dinner in the packed Eagle Tavern with about 150 other guests—this year two of our tablemates were dressed as Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett! It's dark, warm, and noisy—no electric lights—and a fiddler goes from table to table taking requests. Kaline was practically invisible, sleeping under the table until it was time to go out into the village.

After dinner, we followed a jack-o-lantern-lit path all through the village. There are performances of Hallowe'en stories and songs. Most of the visitors come in costume, and at various points on the path, village presenters greet everyone dressed in elaborate vintage costumes.

It's a lot of moving through crowds in the dark—at one point we walked over a fog-filled, laser-lit covered bridge. There are buildings lit up to look like someone is raising a Frankenstein monster inside; the carousel runs backward to creepy music; and a pair of horses run up and down in a field to reenact the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It's a lot to ask of a dog, asking them to focus with all that going on. Kaline just did his first one last year.

Kaline with some of the hundreds of hand-carved pumpkins.

This year, he was totally unfazed by anything, except for one part in the excellent new Top Hat Sideshow where a performer was cracking a flaming whip. Suitable application of treats fixed that promptly. Kaline is quite willing to tolerate bizarre sights and strange loud noises if they mean he's going to get food. And while he doesn't need treats to perform his duties in normal locations, for events like Hallowe'en Nights I always make sure to take some high-value morsels with me. I like to think of it as hazard pay!

Kaline ably led me through all the crowds, ignoring all the costumed distractions. He was fantastic. We ended at the big restaurant, with Kaline passing out under a table while Mom and I shared some delicious mini-donuts and hot chocolate.

The next night was the fall musical, American Idiot, presented by the University of Michigan's amazing musical theatre department. If you've never seen it, it features songs from Green Day's album of the same name, at rock-concert volume. Earplugs for the human theatregoers were handed out at the door; for Kaline, I had purchased Mutt Muffs.

The ear protection for him was a rousing success—while the musical was blaring, I could feel Kaline twitching against my feet, so deeply asleep that he was having a fantastic dream.

It may be called a vacation, but it can actually be more exhausting than regular life, both for me and for Kaline. We are both under more stress than normal, and he is on duty far more than usual. He can go for twenty miles of pack walks and still want to do zoomies when he gets home. But after a full day of work—not just helping me, but maintaining his professionalism at all times—Kaline completely crashes.

Staying super focused in public is one of the hardest parts of being a service dog, sometimes even harder than learning the actual tasks. A good night of sleep restores him, though; it took me about a week after we got home to recover from our awesome and fun-filled vacation! Still, I can't wait to do it again.


Colt