Yesterday morning (Tuesday) at approximately 6:30 AM I found myself at the tail end one of those horrendous airport lines we only experience the week of Thanksgiving and Christmas in this great nation of ours. It was not moving.

Saddled with belongings and wailing children, we waited patiently for the next person to move up the queue to the baggage attendant. It was taking just a little too long for this to happen so those of us in the back craned our necks to check out the offender. A dog. An old, arthritic shepherd mix, to be exact. She was resisting her owner’s entreaties to move, yet again, from one spot on the cold floor to the next, even colder spot on the floor.

From my vantage point in line, among the disgracefully delayed, we could see the attendant shaking her head. We could see the dog’s owner asking for another attendant. Finally, the murmured gossip filtered to the back of the line: the dog’s papers were not in order. She would have to be confined to Miami until the owner could find a vet to provide a legal health certificate.

This is her lucky day. And I’m in need of some Karma. Both selfish thoughts registered as I made my way out of line (stupid, stupid, stupid—you’ll never get on that plane in time).

So I flashed the attendant my vet license ID, my driver’s license and a big smile. She said she’d accept a hand-written note instead of the standard certificate—if I could find a notary. Luckily, the airport had one on staff. The entire operation was complete in under 15 minutes.

Ellie was an excellent patient. Her vet in Honduras, however, was not tremendously accustomed to writing out travel certificates. And so, despite her perfect health, she would have been stuck in Miami (on her way to Vermont from Tegucigalpa) without proper documentation.

How does one get proper documentation? The airport staff did not know. All they knew was that Ellie`s papers were not what they needed. They had no idea where to send her.

How do you get another flight this time of year? —especially when traveling with a dog. The airport staff said they’d address that problem once the other was under control.

It’s amazing to me that in 2006 when you can’t walk from one end of an airport to another without seeing twenty dogs, the airlines still can’t get it together to produce one simple, coherent policy on how to travel with pets—or whether to travel with pets—at what time of year—under which weather conditions—etc…

You have only to attempt it yourself to see what confusion, mixed directives and arbitrary policies can do to your state of mind. I once had to beg the screening staff not to X-ray my bird with that tunnel device. Some airports freak out with any dog-out-of-bag transgression. Others could care less.

Perhaps it’s that, in my line of work, I only hear about the nightmare cases. No matter. If you travel often enough with your dog you know what I’m talking about.

I had one client, a wealthy real estate magnate, who traveled with his dog twice a year—to and from Marbella. He chartered a plane for the trip. He refused to leave his precious Australian Shepherd in the hands of any potentially wayward airport staff or subject her to any degrading treatment. If only we could all be so lucky.

Happy travails! (Oops, I meant—Happy travels!)