Cuba the Dog, Chapter Two

Cuba the Dog, Chapter Two

As I wrote the previous chapter on Cuba the Dog, he was scheduled to fly on 12/5. Of course, nothing happens in Cuba as scheduled. It turned out Cuba had not been fed in three days before Nora picked him up. It took, therefore, three days for him to fill up and start giving fecal samples needed for worm tests. So, 12/5 was too soon, and we rescheduled his flight for Sunday, 12/12. Fill up, he did, the vet got his samples, and tests proved the deworming treatment had done its work. Cuba was certified as healthy and parasite free.

Now we needed a travel cage for a small pup. As I've said before, everything is available in Cuba if you're willing to pay the price. There wasn't time for Ashley to buy a cage and get it to Cuba, so Nora bought one for $60.00 that could be had in the US for $15 or $20. She told me she got a good price (by Cuban standards). One more hurdle jumped.

Ashley had found a charity in Canada that arranges flights to Canada from the Caribbean for dogs that tourists want to adopt. The actual flight for Cuba the dog would be from Varadero to Toronto, and it wasn't going to cost Ashley anything. But to qualify for this benefit, the flight had to be on Air Transat which flies out of Varadero, not Havana. And the way things work is you have to present the dog's paperwork one day ahead of the flight to Air Transat's cargo representative, Javier. That meant Nora had to make the 100 mile trip twice from Havana to Varadero in a car rented form a friend. So Nora met her friend, Javier on Saturday in Varadero, made the arrangements, and drove back home to Havana. Then she got up early to drive back to the Varadero airport by 8am on Sunday to check him in for his 10am flight to Toronto.

Throughout this extra week of arrangements, Ashley, as a good mother would, sent emails worrying about every detail, we translated and forwarded the email traffic both ways, and it was clear Nora had thought of everything. Nothing was going to go wrong.

And nothing did. Cuba had a comfortable 3 or 4 hours in the baggage hold of the plane (which is heated and pressurized just like the cabin), and Ashley and her partner were waiting at the Air Transat baggage facility in Toronto as Cuba debarked (strange word for a dog story) from the plane.

And, true to her word, Ashley sent us a bunch of photos of the happy pup in his new home. A couple are shown here, and my favorite is Cuba, the little pup from the tropics, having his first encounter with snow. May he always be as happy as he was that day.

Les Inglis