So, it’s happened again – another animal has gone missing as a result of airline mis-handling (this time the airline is LOT Polish Airlines).  On Tuesday, May 15, Tosha went missing from LOT checked baggage/cargo and her people were told she was missing after they had boarded the plane.

And on top of this, the Friends of Jack have heard rumors (still unconfirmed) that another dog went missing from a different airline the previous week.

REALLY????

So what did anybody who works in the airline industry at JFK or the Port Authority (JFK’s governing body) actually learn from Jack’s ordeal??  Or for that matter, from any of the animals that have been lost as a result of airline mishandling?

Clearly, they did not learn that COMMUNICATION is critical to finding the lost pet.

The team of searchers from Heavenly Angels Animal Rescue (the agency that placed Tosha with her family, who had boarded that LOT plane), and searchers Bonnie Folz and Angela Vitucci (FoJs), found that the Port Authority Police AND employees of LOT airlines were unaware that a dog had been lost on airport grounds.  They were unaware of this 48 hours after Tosha had gone missing!!!

Jack went missing on the evening of August 25, 2011.  Before dawn on the morning of August 26, I spoke to a very nice woman at an AA call center who gave me the direct dial number to JFK baggage.  I began calling them at 7am.  I spoke to the supervisor there at 730am – and the baggage supervisor was totally unaware that Jack had been lost! To say I was horrified was an understatement. There was a cat lost in his baggage area, and he didn’t even know to look for it!!

Surely, this was just a problem with AA. Other airlines had to be more together than this.

But it seems not.

After a two month period in which we’ve seen 3 – and possibly 4 – dogs be in danger as a result of air travel, it just becomes clearer and clearer that the system isn’t really working to keep our pets safe.

Now I hear the naysayers – “How many dogs and cats have travelled through just the New York City airports in the last 2 months?  And there have only been 3 (well, maybe 4) incidents?  That’s not so bad, really…”

Of course, if you think pets are just “things” – no different from a sofa or a laptop or a purse – you’d be right.  I’m sure that far more than 3 (or maybe 4) pieces of luggage have been mishandled at LGA and JFK in the last two months.

But I refuse to accept that our loving, loyal, smart, devoted COMPANIONS are no different than a laptop.

And because they ARE DIFFERENT – they deserve to be treated with more care, more diligence, and MORE RESPECT.

Accidents happen.  But when an accident effects a pet, it is an accident on a different level than merely finding all one’s sweaters on the ground in baggage claim.

When an accident happens with a pet, that pet deserves to be searched for beginning the moment it is lost.  And if they aren’t immediately found, they deserve to be searched for by concerned experts until they are found.

Here’s my bottom line:  If a dog or cat is lost by airline mishandling the airline involved is responsible to begin intensive search IMMEDIATELY.  If the pet is not found within an hour, airport police and local experts (e.g., Missing Pet Partnership or its local equivalent) should be contacted to immediately intensify the search.  This is not a situation where an animal is just running around its neighborhood and can walk back in the front door.  The pet is in unfamiliar – and dangerous – territory.  Search efforts must be made quickly, and with extraordinary intensity.

It seems like common sense, doesn’t it?

But I guess common sense is not so common.

And unfortunately, it seems to be in especially short supply at airports.

Everyone who followed the story of Jack from its early days knows where they were exactly 6 months ago today — October 25, 2011, at around 9pm (U.S. Eastern Time). At that moment, Karen was informed by AA that Jack had fallen out of the ceiling in the Customs and Border Patrol Office at JFK Terminal 8.  He had been in the building for his whole ordeal – and had survived 61 days without substantial (and maybe any) food or water. Cats are amazing!!  Hope was truly alive again…

But with that hope came new realizations and new concerns.  Big wake-up call: Jack REALLY HAD BEEN in Terminal 8 (the AA terminal) all that time.  All 61 days.  The trail that the search dog had followed was not the right trail (no blame to the search dog or his handler… they were working under horrible conditions).  Jack had been in the building the whole time!  Was AA really looking for him??  They say yes… I have my doubts.  But only Jack knew the truth, and he wasn’t talking.

And the new concern: was Jack really alright?  As in healthy??  Cats can survive for a substantial amount of time without food, but it takes a toll on their internal organs, especially the liver (the body’s primary cleansing mechanism in all mammals).  And then there was the fact that he had been hurt in the fall from the ceiling – how serious was that??  Would he be able to heal and get back to his old frisky, funny, crazy self??

There were prayers, and love, and cards and gifts.  If this boy was to heal, the love alone – coming from every corner of the Earth – should have been enough to do it.

But it was not to be.  The liver disease was too advanced.  And his wounds were growing, not healing.  After 12 days in veterinary ICU, and an agonizing decision by Karen to let him go to the Rainbow Bridge, Jack became our angel in heaven.

We must use this anniversary, the 6 month anniversary of  hope renewed, THE FIRST OF THOSE 12 DAYS, to really make a difference.  To kick things into a higher gear.  What can we do in 12 days to make a real difference??

Since Jack crossed the Bridge, many people have been working hard to keep this from happening again.  Indeed, Jack’s spirit was clearly with Wenty, the cat lost by Alaska Airlines at Seattle-Tacoma Airport.  Alaska Airlines opened their hearts – and more importantly, their planes and their space in the airport! – for searchers from Missing Pet Partnership to look for Wenty.  Wenty was recovered in less than 72 hours (though every hour was a very looooooong hour for Wenty’s mama!).  Jack’s community sprang into action the moment they heard about this, starting a Facebook page for Wenty, sending love and light, and show a willingness to help in whatever way they could.

Clearly, the spirit is willing… it is time to take our desire for what happened to Jack to never happen again and go to the next level.  This movement requires more than a Facebook page.  Or even a Facebook page and a blog!  It is time for us to hit the streets – literally.  And the best way to do that is with coordinated effort.

And the best way for us to coordinate our efforts is through an organization.  A non-profit organization.  An organization we are calling…

WHERE IS JACK?, INC. has been created to provide a vehicle to spread the word about what happened to Jack and how to keep your pet safe if you must travel by air.  We’ve been expanding the website (check out Pets on a Plane: The Options, above) and will keep doing so.  We are also looking forward to taking our message to veterinary conferences (most airlines require a health certificate for pets to fly, so getting vets and vet techs to tell their clients about us would be sooooo awesome!).   We want to make people aware that pets are in substantial danger when they fly – and particularly in danger when they fly as checked baggage/cargo.  We also want vets and their clients to know that every pet incident is not reported on the DoT’s monthly Animal Incident Reports – because all companion animals are not considered “pets”.  We want every veterinarian and vet tech to know what we now know — and we want them to send their clients to us so they will not be “flying blind,” so to speak.  If Karen had known on August 24th what she knows now, Jack and Barry would never have gotten on that plane.

We also plan to spread our information through animal advocacy conferences like the No Kill Conference and the No More Homeless Pets Conferennce.  Even many animal advocates are not aware of the dangers pets face when they fly.  It’s time to make this common knowledge among the people who are most concerned with creating a better life for all animals!!

All this awareness is dedicated toward moving toward one goal:  a world in which animals are treated with respect and kindness when they travel.   They are not “baggage” or “cargo” – they are living, feeling creatures who should not have to even be at risk of going through the suffering that Jack went through.  In addition to educating people, we also advocate that airlines and airports must have policies and procedures in place to find animals quickly if an accident should occur.  We are working to make the airlines be more accountable – and to make the government more willing to enforce the need for all companion animals to be treated with kindness and dignity when they fly.

We want to be at the forefront of making all these good things happen – because if we don’t WHO WILL?  And we know you want all these things to happen, too.  Over the course of the next few months we will be asking for volunteers to put posters and post cards up in veterinary offices everywhere.  But first, we have to get those posters and post cards printed.  You can help with this RIGHT NOW – by becoming a member of WHERE IS JACK?, INC..  Your dollars will only go toward reimbursing expenses (like conference registrations) and creating and printing hard copy materials (like posters and post cards).  No salaries… no overhead.  Just getting the word out in the best way we know how.

We appreciate your continued interest in Jack and in the cause of making airline travel safer for pets.  Please keep us in your kind thoughts as we take the next steps on this journey… and keep this website in mind because you never know when you’ll run into someone who is planning to fly with their pet!!!  Spread the word… and tell them JACK WAS HERE!!!

Jack went missing over 7 months ago.  And I’ve been struggling with the complexities that have emerged as a result of my vow to him that no other animal would be die because he or she had flown a commercial airline.   And yesterday I received two more wake-up calls that this work MUST move forward.

In the middle of the afternoon, I got a text from Friend of Jack Eileen Pollan that a post had been put up on the page about Nahla, a Viszla who had gone missing from Delta’s cargo area at La Guardia Airport (just across the borough of Queens from where Jack had gone missing at JFK).  Knowing the FoJ community would respond with help and prayers, I immediately posted Nahla’s picture to Jack’s facebook page and asked the FoJs for search help.  And then I went to the vet with my oldest dog, Trixie.

You see, Trix has been limping off and on for about the last month.  And the limp (her right rear leg) has been getting more prominent.  I was worried she had a torn meniscus and figured it would be good to get an x-ray and have a doctor take a look.  And so we were at the vet for about an hour.  Turns out my Trixster (age 10) has arthritis.

Just as we were finishing up with the doctor, Bonnie Folz, Jack’s on-site search coordinator and missing pet finder extraordinaire, called to tell me there was a flyer to post on the Jack page and that help was needed getting the word out in the area surrounding La Guardia.  It was pretty clear that Nahla had left the airport property.

And as I got off the phone with Bonnie and paid my bill, I looked up to see one of the receptionists filling out a health certificate for a gentleman and his dog seated on the other side of the reception area. I listened for a bit – seems he was taking his dog to St. Croix, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands.  And then I looked at the dog.  The dog was too big to go under the seat.  And the dog was not young.  Not young AT ALL.

That meant this guy was flying out of Miami (temperature yesterday: 88 degrees F) with his dog in cargo – a dog who, it turned out, was 13 years old – and was not even having a vet check him over!!!  I had to ask…

“Sir, are you flying your dog out in cargo?  Are you aware of the stresses older dogs are subjected to when they fly cargo?”

He looked shocked.  “Yes, he’s flying to the USVI… it’s only a 2 hour flight… ”

OMG.

“Sir, do you know how many animals are lost, injured or killed by the airlines every year?  And do you know that older animals are particularly at risk?  Did you hear about Jack the Cat – lost by American Airlines’ negligence for 61 days, and then he died?”

“Oh my God no… you’re freaking me out!”

So then I went and sat with him and his dog (great dog, by the way – rescued from the streets in Mexico) and told him about Jack.  And even though what happened to Nahla was not Delta’s fault, I told him about Nahla, too – to remind him that flying in cargo is very stressful, and that dogs coming out of that situation might be very stressed and still not be safe.  And then I got his email address and promised to send him some information, which I did, right after I got home and posted Nahla’s flyer to Jack’s page, asking all the FoJs for help.

And then, later that night, Bonnie let me know that Nahla had been found.  Unfortunately, she was not found before she had crossed the rainbow bridge.

And I was reminded, yet again, how important it is that all of us keep Jack in mind all the time.

1. Nahla was lost because her guardian (who was an experienced handler) was trying to take her out of her crate in the open cargo area.  When Karen and I talked about what it was like to look for Jack in the baggage area right after he went missing, what she said over and over and over again was that the baggage area was LOUD – not a place a cat would want to stay.  And clearly, not a place an overstimulated, frightened dog would want to stay, either.  NO ONE (not airport personnel, and not even pet parents) should be allowed to remove an animal from his or her carrier in anything but a secure room in the airport.  And airlines must be required to provide such a room if they are going to move animals as “checked baggage” or “cargo.”
2. Most people just do not understand the stresses that a dog or cat (or any other animal for that matter) goes through when flying as cargo or checked baggage.  First and foremost, the animal is separated from his or her pet parent – the person he or she trusts for protection and love.  Secondly, conditions are loud, bumpy, and even possibly smelly (remember, dogs and cats have a much stronger sense of smell than humans do).  And thirdly, the animal will disembark from this stressful experience in what may be an extremely unfamiliar environment – an airport in an unknown city.  Unless the animal is very mellow by nature (since sedatives and flying are not a good combination), this has the potential to be a recipe for disaster unless all the humans involved are EXTREMELY careful.
3. All the vets and vet techs in the practice I take my animals to are well aware of what happened to Jack.  Several times, they have referred pet parents to me to help them prepare for travel.  But this was a new receptionist, and clearly the dog had recently been seen by a vet and just needed a health certificate.  If I hadn’t been at the right place at the right time — and spoken up! — this poor 13-year-old dog would have been put in cargo without a second thought… and definitely without his guardian understanding that at minimum, he needed to do some things to make sure this fur-kid would be safe.  BOTTOM LINE: it’s up to all of us, all the time, to keep our eyes and ears open, to be aware when people are planning to fly with their pets, to be prepared to raise awareness and help them prepare in the best way possible.

I know the Universe was speaking to me yesterday – reminding me that even thought honoring Jack’s legacy is complicated and sometimes difficult, it is absolutely necessary.  We must educate people and require that the airlines – and the government – change the way they approach pet air travel.  Jack, and now Nahla, deserve nothing less.

And I pray that Guido, the 13-year-old rescue dog I met yesterday, will have a safe passage to the USVI.  He’s moving there.  And I hope he gets to enjoy a nice long retirement on those pristine beaches.