by Dave Nasser
That done, while Christie got on the phone to her boss to arrange a couple of days’ leave, we all headed down to the dog park. They wanted to film George running around with his friends, and also thought it would be cool if I could bring down my enormous, home-improvised pooper-scooper. “You need big tools for big jobs!” I quipped to camera.
It was now around four o’clock in the afternoon—several hours since either Christie or I had had a chance to grab ourselves a meal but, at the same time, less than six since the measuring had taken place—and already the colossal Oprah Winfrey Show machine was in full flow. It was like we’d been swept up by some huge TV juggernaut—all-powerful, and completely unstoppable.
But I wasn’t worried. From the beginning, it felt that every single thing would be taken care of, right down to the Oprah show details by the amazing Shantel, who’d already put all sorts of things in motion. She’d even organized an appointment for George to see Doc Wallace, so he could get a certificate to confirm he was fit to fly. I’d headed off to the vet with him right after the crew left.
And her next mission—the reason she had called me now—was to get George and us from Tucson to Chicago by airplane, preferably tomorrow.
It didn’t seem to matter to the Oprah team just how hard that might be to achieve in practice, and, as Shantel had explained to me on the phone, it had been proving pretty hard. Since we’d last spoken about it—right after the measuring took place—it had been quite a job back in Chicago, apparently, to solve the problem of how best they could get George to the show.
They’d first suggested transporting him via a pet charter. A pet charter is a flight that takes animals only, in crates, and has no seats on board for any passengers. This was complex and far from ideal. First, because we’d have to dovetail it with another flight for me and Christie, and second, because we weren’t so sure George would enjoy being crated up and separated from us for that length of time. As it turned out, a pet charter wouldn’t work anyway. It was only good for pets up to a hundred and fifty pounds—a whole ninety-five pounds less than George was.
Next up, then, was the plan to hire a private jet for him. But costing close to a staggering $30,000, this was dismissed as being a little too much, even for The Oprah Winfrey Show to fork out. Since then they’d contacted several of the big airlines, without success. This latest call from Shantel had brought good news, however. Apparently, American Airlines was up for trying to do it—and first class—but only if a long list of boxes were ticked, including George wearing a muzzle so he wouldn’t scare the other passengers. They were also worried about how flying might affect him. Would he vomit? Would his ears hurt? Would he be scared and get aggressive? Would he lose control and go to the bathroom on the plane?
These were all real concerns, and they had every right to voice them. It was a big deal taking any animal into the air in a plane, let alone when that animal’s the size of a large lion, and in the cabin with the passengers. I told Shantel to reassure them that he really was a gentle giant, that he had a bladder capacity that could probably bust a few world records of its own, and that I didn’t doubt for a second that he’d deal with air travel the same way he dealt with everything else—without the least bit of fuss.
She called the airline back, but they weren’t satisfied. They weren’t happy about doing it unless they felt reassured, and they felt they would be only if they could meet George beforehand, which was why Shantel had just called me back. Could I maybe get myself and George down to the Tucson airport to meet with someone from AA? Give the thing a bit of a tryout—like, now?
“So George and I have to head down to the airport,” I told Christie, “to give Project Oprah a dry run.”
“What, now?” she said, glancing at the kitchen clock in shock.
“Yup,” I confirmed. “Like, now.”
As George and I headed off in my truck to the airport, I took some time to take it all in. We were now the owners of the tallest dog in the world, ever. The tallest dog in the whole world. It was mind-blowing. It was incredible to think that all the hard work had paid off, that our pet was now famous—potentially world famous.
“Hey, Georgie,” I said. “How does it feel, now that it’s official? Do you feel different? Do you feel special? Do you feel ready for your fifteen minutes of fame?”
I shook my head. Fame. What a strange concept for a dog, and one that obviously, bar a whole load of petting and attention, meant nothing to George whatsoever. And he was going to be a “celebrity passenger,” courtesy of Oprah Winfrey and American Airlines—well, more correctly, a celebrity passenger if it all worked out okay. Would he really be as cool as I’d reassured everybody he would be? Would he do okay at thirty-nine thousand feet? Would he be okay as a guest on a TV show?
I glanced across at him as we drove, and he glanced right on back. Yup, he seemed to say, he’d be just fine.
Shantel had arranged for us to meet a guy at the airport—he was the local head manager for American Airlines, based in Tucson, and it was he who had to decide whether everything was going to work. It took around thirty minutes for us to get there, and by the time we arrived it was dark. The drizzly clouds of earlier had disappeared too, and the sky was, as ever, full of stars.
I love airports at night, the light and the sprawl of them, the fact that everyone’s heading somewhere, that feeling of expectation and excitement they always seem to have. And this was something different in itself. As it was the airline manager’s day off, he’d come from home specially to do this. He’d brought his wife along, too, as she wanted to meet George, so, once we’d found them, we spent some time out on the forecourt taking pictures.
We left her then and went into the bowels of the airport, which gave me a real feeling of déjà vu. We were heading to a different area in a different airport, but it felt just like when we’d come to pick up George as a puppy all that time ago at the airport in Phoenix, as we went through a whole bunch of corridors and elevators that you’d never know existed, and then suddenly—voilà!—we were out on the back side, and there was this great big AA airplane just sitting there.
“So, how is he with traveling generally?” the guy, who was named Pete, asked me, as we crossed the tarmac toward it.
“Oh, just fine,” I answered. “Provided he has room. I mean, he hasn’t flown anywhere since he was a puppy, of course—”
He nodded. “Shantel mentioned that. And I’m with you, there. It’d be one hell of a thing for him to travel in the hold. Is there even a crate anywhere that would hold him?” He laughed then, and shook his head. “Stupid question. I’m guessing that’s a ‘no’!”
I nodded. “But on road trips, he’s always been great. He’s real placid, as you can see, and he’s a great sleeper. Plus he has this truly amazing bladder. It’s incredible, really. He can go all day and night if he needs to.”
“All day and night? That’s incredible. So no worries on a four-hour flight, then.”
“None at all.”
But he didn’t look as though he was convinced.
It was really weird, getting on a big empty plane, just Pete, me and George—not that George was bothered. As perhaps befitted a dog whose diet included several pounds of Paul Newman’s finest dog food every week, he trotted right on up the steps, every inch the matinee idol, and even turned left, toward the first-class area, when he got to the top. It was as though he knew which part of the cabin was the part he should be in.
“Okay,” said Pete, as I followed him down the fuselage, taking in the space and the feeling of opulence. There were two seats on each side of the central aisle, with loads of leg space between them. And they were big seats too—way bigger than the ones we were used to in coach, with large armrests and headrests, all made of fine leather.
“So,” he said. “Here’s the first-class cabin. We were thinking that if we sat George in here…” He gestured. “You and your wife can sit across the aisle from him.” He pointed out a row. “You want to try him in
here?”
“Sure,” I said. I tried every which way I could think of to fit him in. I tried him rear first, backing him into the row of seats, and then I tried him forward so his head faced the window. I tried him on the seats (Pete didn’t seem to mind this at all), then I tried him in front of the seats, sitting on the floor. But there was simply no way we could do it. However George settled himself—and he seemed to be loving this new game of ours—there just wasn’t room for him to fit. He was too big. The setup at the front simply wasn’t wide enough for him. If he lay down—which is what he’d be doing, pretty much—his head not only stuck out into the aisle, it stuck out so far that his paws were touching the seat across the aisle. And they couldn’t have that for safety reasons, of course, not to mention it would impede the trolley that brought all the goodies.
“Okay,” Pete said finally, having watched all these attempts with a wry expression on his face. “I don’t think this is going to work, is it?” He shook his head. “You’re not going to want to hear it, I know, but I think it might have to be economy after all.”
So we filed back to economy, and it seemed to me he was right. There was plenty more width to play with here. What George probably needed was the row at the bulkhead—the row immediately behind the partition and galley, where there was plenty of floor space in front of the seats too. Here he could stretch out properly. Back here it was set up with three seats on one side and two on the other, and, as we’d thought, the three side was perfect for him. Christie and I could have the bank of two opposite. We had George try it out, and, presto, it worked fine.
Or at least, I thought it did. I could see that Pete wasn’t so sure. It was a feeling I’d had pretty much since we’d started this whole process. Though he was pleasant and friendly, the whole tone of this operation had felt serious from the start. Much as I was doing my best to reassure him, I knew that if he didn’t feel it would work to take George on this aircraft, then there was no way he was going to okay it.
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “This all still seems a bit tight to me. I’m not sure they’re going to go for this.”
The “they” in this case were the higher powers at AA, who were in charge of safety, and Pete explained that he’d need to talk to them before they could give things the all clear. I got the impression that there was quite a lot riding on this, that this decision was quite a big responsibility for him. He’d already taken a couple of photos of George in first class, and now he took a couple more of him sitting in the bulkhead. “You know,” I said, as he did so, wanting to reassure him some more, “you can trust me on this. George really is the most chilled dog on the planet. And he’s trained, so he’s highly obedient too.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he told me, as we went back down the steps. “And I will do my best on this, I promise. But I really don’t know. I can’t get you an answer right now. We’ll be back to you—well, Shantel will, I guess—just as soon as we can.”
We made uncomfortable small talk as he escorted us out, my mind mainly elsewhere as it was beginning to sink in that the chances were high this wouldn’t happen. We finally reached the public area of the airport again. There was nothing I could do now except keep my fingers crossed, and with the flight time tomorrow morning now less than twelve hours away, I just had to hope for the best. I thanked Pete, and made one last stab at reassuring him, then George and I headed back toward town.
As I drove, the whole exercise was beginning to feel crazy, and I wondered if the chances of the trip happening were disappearing fast. Here George and I were running around town late on a Monday evening, and the whole thing could be for nothing. But we had to keep positive that it would happen; fingers crossed, Pete would come through for us with the airline. While he did what he had to do, we had a job of our own. We had to get to a pet store and buy a muzzle for George before the stores closed for the night. I hadn’t realized how late it was, so we had only a few minutes to get to the nearest pet store, but we had to make it, because no muzzle meant definitely no flight.
Happily, we made good time through the evening traffic, and arrived at Petco, a five-minute drive from home, just before it closed. George and I jumped out of the truck and pretty much dived through the entrance. Having cruised down several aisles as they were turning out all the lights, we eventually found and grabbed the biggest muzzle we could find. It still didn’t look big enough, I thought anxiously, as I paid for it, but it was all the store had, so it would have to do.
“It’s definitely not big enough,” Christie said when we got home and I showed it to her. “We’re going to have to work out a way to make it bigger.”
“How can we?” I asked her. I was really beginning to stress now.
“Give it to me,” she said, reaching in the kitchen drawer for some scissors. “I’m sure I can work out a way to do it if I think long enough. Why don’t you head off and get your things packed?”
As every new parent will probably tell you, once you have your first baby almost everything you do suddenly feels like a major military operation. One minute you can come and go as you please, the next every single trip—even if it’s to the store for a carton of milk—feels like it has to be organized to a huge degree. In the early days with Annabel, on occasions when I had her on my own, it sometimes felt like I’d rather go without pretty much anything I needed than have to do everything I had to do to get myself and my tiny baby organized to go out—get her diapered, dressed, into the car, out of the car, into her stroller, into a store, out of the store, back into the car, home, out of the car and back to wherever we’d started. And we lived in Arizona—how did people manage (and I clearly remember thinking this) who lived in cold places like Alaska?
And if those sorts of trips had seemed like military operations, what we had to do now felt ten times more complicated. If we were going to make that flight in the morning, we had a lot to do in a short space of time. As well as packing for ourselves, we had to get everything organized for George, of course—a whole bunch of his favorite food, portioned out, meal by meal, in ziplock bags, as well as a few doggie treats, his drool towels (we packed several, in case the color of them mattered for the cameras), his leash, his food and water bowls, and a bunch of big—and I mean BIG—bags for his giant poops. Then we had to get everything packed for Annabel too, because Christie had arranged that we’d drop her off at my parents, who’d look after her for the two days we’d be away. It would be longer, in fact, because we’d planned to drop her that night—it made so much more sense to do that than to get her up so early and have to take her there on our way to the airport in the morning, even though—and I knew Christie was stressing about this too—it would be the first night she’d ever spent away from us.
I went into the bedroom to see much of the job all but done, though; while George and I had been at the airport, Christie had been busy too. She’d got the half ton of stuff for Annabel pretty much sorted: the travel crib, the stroller, all the diapers and changing gear. It looked like she’d be staying with my mom and dad for a month. I got going and started grabbing my own things.
“Hey,” said Christie, following me in a few minutes later, with Annabel at her hip and George at her side. He was modeling the now butchered giant-sized muzzle and looking reassuringly cool about it all. “I think this’ll work, if we stitch it, don’t you?” She’d cut the bottom seam through to make the whole thing much bigger, and from somewhere she’d managed to find some strips of Velcro, which she’d pinned into place to try out for size. “I’m thinking that if we restitch it all with the strips underneath, it’ll be big enough, but also stay closed. What d’you think?”
I shook my head, surveying both the time and my little family. It seemed crazy to be running around doing all this stuff when we still didn’t know if it was going to happen. It was almost ten on a chilly Monday evening in February, and at least four out of the four of us should be in bed, not stitching muzzles and packing for a siege, much less deposi
ting our daughter at my folks’ at what might turn out to be midnight, then heading off at dawn to Chicago. If that, indeed, was what it would turn out we were doing.
“This thing is getting more surreal by the minute,” I said. “But, yes. Great job. That’ll do fine, hon.”
As if on cue, my cell barked only seconds later. It was Shantel. It seemed we were good to go.
CHAPTER 20
It’s a Small World After All
So much for keeping everything quiet.
When we arrived at the Tucson airport at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, we got our first real taste of what was to come. It seemed the whole world and his wife were there with us—well, not the whole world, obviously, but a huge crowd of people, around a hundred and fifty of them at least, all of them waiting to catch the same flight as us, and all of them understandably a bit confused by the presence of a very big dog in their midst. You don’t often see pet dogs in airports. And to see a dog as big as George must have been some sight—there was none bigger than he was and that was official.
Naturally, he quickly became the center of attention. What was he doing there? Where were we all going? And, while we were at it, did we have a saddle for that thing?
We tried our best to be vague, and must have sounded it too. We just kept saying that the three of us “had business in Chicago,” which must have raised a heap more questions than it answered. But, hey, this was celebrity life, wasn’t it?
