Ollie Bug- The International Traveler

Our dog Ollie is my emotional support animal and I am his emotional support person. Or maybe Ingo is his. Sometimes I think he loves him more. And I am pretty sure the feeling is mutual. Ingo will often enter a room, give Ollie copious pets and kisses and tell him what a perfect boy he is and not seem to notice that I am in the room…

I got Ollie when I was living in Los Angeles, when he was 8 weeks old. While he was still a pup, I ended up in a very rough break up without a stable place to live, having to bring hime everywhere with me, including to my new job. He was about a year old when I met Ingo, at work. They immediately fell in love. Ingo would help me out, taking him on walks and playing with him. The rest is history…

Life hasn’t always been easy with Ollie. Housing with a 75lb. pit bull mix in California has been next to impossible. In his defense we did once get a house because the owners had met him at a mutual friends birthday party and they were impressed by how gentle he was and didn’t try to eat off any of the plates that were strewn around the yard. But then they sold the house during covid and gave us a month to get out….

Ollie was a bit of a punk in his teen years, after working hard to make sure he was well trained, he would take off and scare the crap out of people. Not listening to a word I said. I was horrified that I had raised an out of control pit bull. At one point, a child had tried to pet him and he growled at it. So when we got pregnant I was a bit nervous about how this was all going to work out. But when we moved from the Bay Area to the mountains that all changed. The first time we went for a hike and I let him off leash, he took off after a family of deer, and I thought, here we go… But I whistled and called him and he immediately came back. And I swear he has listened to every word since then. I can literally tell him to go get in the shower and he will, even though I can tell he really doesn’t want to. For years now he has come in and out of where ever we are living with no fenced in yard with no issues. He doesn’t go far, he sun bathes, and guards the house. And he has had never ending patience with our son.

We were essentially living in a trailer for our last year or so in California because that was the only way for us to live in town with him. And because the housing crisis has become so extreme that we couldn’t compete with the wave of other people looking for housing and the crazy prices. He is such a part of our family, that I would only consider moving to another country if we could bring him with us. How could I reward him for being such a perfect dog by leaving him behind?

Being a registered emotional support animal, Ollie has been able to fly domestically with us. He curled up at our feet and people were often shocked to see him at the end of a flight having no idea that such a large dog was quietly riding along. I knew that the landscape of flying with your dog had changed post pandemic. Lots of people had apparently abused the emotional support animal card and there wasn’t a single airline left that allowed any animals to fly other than actual service animals or ones that could fit under the seat in a carrier. And most airlines now had a “no short nose breed” rule below the plane as respiratory issues had caused some deaths and I am sure, some lawsuits. Pit bulls are lumped into this category. Ollie isn’t a pug. He has a fairly long nose on his giant head, and although he snorts like a pig, breathes just fine.

So I knew it was going to be hard, but I had no idea. Ingo had brought his dog Safira to the US from Brazil before she passed and it had cost a grand or two and had been a tangle of paperwork and running around, but doable. She was a similar size, but a mutt mix that didn’t leave her with a giant head… After researching every possible option, I realized that you can’t even do it yourself any more. He would have to fly cargo and we would have to hire a service to handle the paperwork. I found only two services that could handle the transport to Brazil, and they both quoted me 5-6k. Ugh, this was going to take every penny we had. In hind site, this would have been a drop in the hat compared to what we ended up paying. Well, I chose the wrong one of the two services.  Instead of a lump sum they offered to break it up into a payment plan, so that’s the one we went with. 

We signed on with them, established a time line for our travel and his, bought our tickets, connected them with the vet for all Ollie’s records, and began patiently waiting for them to secure travel plans for Ollie while we listed the trailer and everything else we owned and started the process of wrapping up our lives in California to head to Rio de Janeiro in a few months time. As the weeks began to pass, we began to get nervous as to why we hadn’t gotten confirmation of his travel yet. And in general I wasn’t loving the pattern of them asking for some sort of documentation, me sending it immediately and them responding a few days later. And then the first bomb dropped. The airline they had assumed would let him travel with them was no longer able to take pit bulls. That left only one airline that would, KLM, and the ticket alone for him to fly to Amsterdam and then Brazil would be 4k. So that would bring the total package to 9k for his travel. We were in a total panic. We had already sold the trailer and were staying with friends and put every in motion to move… But we regrouped. We asked our friends and family to help chip in and got a gracious $2300 that helped us make the next payment. And as we sold things we managed to pay it all as well as the $700 giant kennel that we had to pay for out of pocket.

And then the next bomb dropped. The week of our travel.  Ollie’s rabies vaccine from a few years ago was still valid, but KLM requires that animals traveling with them have had continuous vaccine coverage since their first one. Ollie had a 2 day lapse between his last one and the expiration of the previous one. So he would need to have a new one the same year as his travel. He would need another shot and then would not be able to travel until 21 days after it was administered. He would not be getting on his flight. Because we hired this service, I had no idea about this rule. I had given all of his vet records to the service in the first days we signed on with them months before. They blew it. So we rushed to the vet to get the shot and went into another panic. Should one of us go with our son and one stay with him?

The tricky thing was that starting in October I would need a Visa to enter Brazil and mine was on my old passport with my maiden name and I hadn’t been able to get a new one because they weren’t issuing them until October when their new Visa laws went into effect. We were in a tough situation. If I wanted to go, I had to go now.

So luckily the friend we were staying with was Juice. Who is the most dependable awesome person and Ollie’s favorite auntie. She quickly helped us make a plan that she would keep him, with her dad’s help because of her crazy out of town nursing and doing military reserve training schedule, take him to redo all his required vet appointments that have to happen within certain days of travel, and get him to the airport. And that’s what she did. And almost a month later he was delivered to our doorstep in Rio de Janeiro!

He is happy and completely healthy. After lots of back and forth with the company Petrelocation, we are getting a partial refund. Basically for the portion that was for their “services”, but not the hard costs of everything else. But after 4 weeks of “processing” we haven’t seen it yet. So fingers crossed…

It is an epic saga. And yes we are crazy pet owners that just spent everything we have on our dog. He better not die anytime soon. I definitely need his emotional support on this chapter of my life!

Thank you so much to all of you that helped get him here in various ways. There is a beach at the end of the bay by the marina that we can walk to called Praya de Gloria, that tends to be less busy on the weekdays, it has the shade of some trees, and people are chill about dogs. This is Ollie’s new favorite place, he chases his ball along the shore endlessly and goes for swims to cool off. And while Ingo and Rio play in the water and I toss the ball it is all worth it.