Travels with Asuna Part 6

We made it!

It’s been a week, by turns exhilarating and exhausting but Asuna made it through her travels with flying colors!

We dropped her off at the Air France check in at Dallas-Fort Worth airport Sunday afternoon, first getting her paperwork validated at the airline check in and then rolling her in her crate to the oversized baggage check in where we said goodbye for the flight. Not gonna lie, saying goodbye as they put your dog in her crate on a conveyor belt was not easy. But the attendant seemed to understand our situation and promised she would be well cared for.

The flight itself was fine, if a bit turbulent, one of the more turbulent I’ve been on in a while. I never felt unsafe but I did think a couple times, “gosh, I hope it doesn’t get much worse than this.” More than that, I felt bad for Asuna in the hold, with no idea what was going on with all the bumps. I worried she might be a bit traumatized.

We were told to pick her up in the oversized baggage claim at Charles de Gaule, and there she was; beside two much larger dog crates. The attendant at CDG was solicitously pouring water into the little dish attached to her crate as we walked up which made me feel she had, indeed, been well cared for.

She wasn’t too happy but she was fine and ready for the next step. We sailed through customs—they didn’t even look at her paperwork at the French end—and went to find our rental car for the 2 hour drive to Etampes where we would spend the night, recuperate and then head out on our seven hour drive to Quillan Tuesday morning. It’s a good thing we did too; I didn’t sleep well on the flight (turbulence and a passel of teenagers who stood in the back near our seats making noise half the flight) so I was fighting to stay awake on my turn in the drive to Etampes. At one point, we pulled over at an AIRE (rest stop) and I had to down two bottles of Starbucks and a chocolate bar just to wake up. I could have turned it over to John but he was tired too and had driven the first half. Fortunately the coffee, chocolate and sugar snapped me out of it just long enough to get us to our destination.

The car ride to Quillan was beautiful; we went through Aveyron, Toulouse, and Carcassone, among others, and then on the road to our village. Unfortunately, Asuna really hates car rides in general and long ones in a crate in particular, so she was very anxious, whining and panting most of the way. We gave her some gabapentin, which the vet recommended, to calm her down but it must not have been enough because it had no effect. I think she even made up some new, higher pitched whines to show her dissatisfaction. Poor baby. As always, she was happy when we took comfort stops and calmed right down as soon as we got out of the car.

We arrived on Tuesday evening and have been on the go ever since, getting everything set up, but Asuna seems to be enjoying being here with us and especially enjoying lots of walks and new smells. She’s also getting lots of exercise, not only walking but following John up and down the stairs in the house, since she has to be wherever he is.

I’ll have lots of new stories to tell now that our Travels with Asuna have succeeded. We went to a lovely local celebration of VE day yesterday, with the mayor speaking and the schoolchildren singing and performing a poem about peace. I’ll have some videos of that next week, as well as more about setting up. But we did it. We’re here. We’re tired, all three of us, but happy, as demonstrated by Asuna below, resting on the bed in the living room. A rest that is very well-deserved.