Day 47: Mitzie Day

After 9+ months of worry and 6+ weeks apart, our sweet pup is home.

Every move has challenges. Moving to a new country has more. Moving to a new country with a dog, even more. Moving to a new country with a dog that some deem the most dangerous of all? Yeah, “challenging” isn’t quite strong enough here.

Mitzie is an important part of our Move to Spain story, especially as she is why we picked Spain at all. She is also, in a lot of ways, the most complex and expensive part of our move, not to mention the amount of energy we’ve spent worrying about how to get her from there to here.

The Mitzie Move saga, told in easy to digest bullet points:

• Decide to pursue a move to the EU, and begin imagining life in Paris with Mitzie
• Simultaneously discover that yes, you *can* move but no, Paris (all of France, really), won’t let you bring Mitzie along
• Become expert in anti-breed legislation and determine that Spain will let you bring Mitzie with some extra requirements to be met
• Adjust EVERYTHING to Spain, where you’ve never been, from France, where you knew exactly which arrondissements in Paris you wanted to call home
• Discover that only 1 airline that flies out of Chicago will take Mitzie on board and that she needs a crate that could hold Hannibal Lecter; confirm via phone that yes, they’ll take her as long as you book a flight 100% with their airline and do your layover in Frankfurt, and yes, they fly dogs year-round,
• Find said crate and order it long before anything else for the move (to the tune of over $1000), build it, and help Mitzie get acclimated
• Take Mitzie to the vet for an extra chip (EU specific) and a new rabies vax (even though she was up to date) to satisfy the entrance requirements
• Pause on Mitzie planning to coordinate ALL THE THINGS
• Arrange a 3-car caravan (one for the crate, one for the dog, and one for stuff) to get from your home to your Launch Pad with Mitzie
• Watch Mitzie tear her ACL with her first taste of backyard freedom, and discover veterinary care costs in the US are just as inflated as people healthcare costs; decide (with support from your vet) to wait on any sort of surgical repair until after the move so Mitzie isn’t in recovery mode during the journey
• Research and plan out the additional vet visits needed to finalize Mitzie’s move paperwork
• Get a muzzle for Mitzie to get used to before being required to wear one in Spain
• Find an airbnb that will accept dogs so you have somewhere to land in Spain while you look for an apartment that will accept dogs
• Go through all the hoops required to get your visas, many of which take longer than expected, all of which delay your departure by months
• Finally get to the point when you can buy your tickets, buy them, then discover that the only airline that will fly your dog has halted all pet transport due to a heat wave in Europe
• Panic, cancel flights, begin to plan moving one of you overseas now while the other stays behind with Mitzie
• Have friends come to the rescue and offer to home Mitzie until the flight ban is lifted
• Rebuy tickets, losing another day in the process, and add Mitzie to the list of challenging farewells to complete
• Discover a loophole in the vet forms that will allow for a bit more leniency in the timing between visit and flight
• Find an apartment that will accept dogs, meet virtually with landlord and share picture of Mitzie, worry that “dogs” and “Mitzie dogs” aren’t the same thing; breathe a sigh of relief when landlord says Mitzie is cute
• Coordinate 2nd caravan (one for the crate, one for Mitzie) to get Mitzie from the Launch Pad to her vacation spa; say goodbye (for now) to Mitzie two days before departure; come home to empty Launch Pad and realize how long it’s going to feel without Mitzie for 6 weeks
• Fly to Spain, get settled in the airbnb and give thanks that Mitzie did NOT come with you as she would NOT have enjoyed the Hobbit House
• Navigate the coordinating of flights for our friend bringing Mitzie from here and sort through the various shenanigans created by misinformation/misunderstandings of the airline’s rules by the airline employees; breathe through an itinerary change after carefully choosing the timing of the initial flights; get nervous that something will go wrong between here and there
• Coordinate another caravan to get friend + Mitzie + crate to the airport; recoordinate caravan; recoordinate caravan again down to a single car
• Wait and worry while the Important Paper required for Mitzie to leave the US/enter Spain is delayed; breathe a sigh of relief when it is safely in our friend’s hand
• Book transport from airport to Awesome Flat that will accomodate Bill, friend, Mitzie, and the crate; go up in car size after conversation with the transport company
• Wait and worry while one friend transports our other friend & Mitzie & the crate to the airport; wait and worry while check-in happens; wait until friend announces she’d boarded; wait some more until the flight shows as having departed; fall into bed exhausted from all the worry
• Wake up early and wait patiently for the flight to land; watch phone like a hawk until next flight boards and departs
• Distract self with errands (that ended up with their own lengthy story…for another day) while Bill goes to airport to meet friend & Mitzie
• Magically arrive at home at the same time as airport transport and get to have a waggy dog hello on the sidewalk before muscling the crate home
• Experience relief that the crate makes it into the front door, up the stairs, and into the Awesome Flat only to discover it’s too big to go into any of the places you’d imagined it living; decide to sell the crate ASAP

For Sale, Pickup Only

• Notice how scraped up Mitzie is from her journey, apparently spent attempting to escape from the crate; apply bacitracin ointment and extra love

Home!

Yesterday had other bits in it that deserve to be documented another time. For now, it’s all about Mitzie. She’s home, and we’re happy. And we’ve promised her she’ll never have to fly again.