Preparing your puppy for flight

Now that you’ve gotten all your animal quarantine paperwork squared away, you need to prepare your puppy for the flight. Here is what I advise and recommend.

1. Book those tickets. And there are only two airlines I will ever recommend for this process: Hawaiian Airlines or Alaska Airlines. My little baberz flew in-cabin with me because he is brachycephalic (snub-nosed). As mentioned, in our case my original return flight got cancelled on us; so I had to re-book the flight back. The way it works is that each flight is allotted the space for a limited number of animals on board the plane. So if that day’s flight is already filled with animals, you keep searching for available flights. Also worth mentioning, you need to schedule the flight to arrive while the airport quarantine station is still open. So it is best if your flight arrives in Honolulu by 3pm and no later. The earlier the arrival, the better.
2. Find a flight-friendly crate. If your pup is flying in cargo with you, I recommend the Sherpa Pet Carrier Backpack or any of the Sherpa brand soft-sided, flight-approved crates. If your dog is flying in cargo, you want a hard-sided crate; and you will need the pet crate accoutrements like these. I also recommend that you do NOT use disposable pee pads in your crate unless you want your puppy to shred up multiple pee pads throughout your trip like my little kolohe boy did. Instead, you need to line the crate with a thick towel or a thick, absorbent Sherpa crate liner such as this.
3. You will need to give your puppy a quarantine-approved flea and tick medication (we used this), and heartworm medication because let me tell you, the animal quarantine facility is rampant with mosquitos. Hawaii in general is.
4. I also recommend taking the time to train your pup to love their travel crate prior to departure to ease their flight anxiety, along with using a thunder vest and a dose of calming chew. Not only are they going to need the calming assistance for the flight, but they will definitely need it for the airport animal quarantine segment of the endeavor, when they are mandatorily zip-tied into their crates and then separated from you to get checked over by the quarantine vet before release or transport to the Halawa valley quarantine station.
5. You will want to make sure you have dog food and frozen water for your pup to ‘drink’ during the flight to Hawaii. The flight time from CA to HNL is usually 5 hours. If you get laid over anywhere else, it could be even longer. I also recommend that you have your dog go potty before boarding the flight that lands on-island, because they will require that you do not deplane without the animal zip-tied into its crate unless they are a disabilities-based service animal.
6. I also recommend that you drop off a hard-sided crate and at least two blankets to the quarantine facility ASAP after landing, so that your dog establishes his or her den in the quarantine kennel accordingly. You can find cheap dog crates at Ross. You will probably want to either hardcore wash and disinfect their crate after quarantine, or toss it completely and buy a brand new one. If your pet is delivered to the quarantine facility in a soft-sided crate, they will not let your dog use it in their quarantine kennel. I did not want to waste my money on a hard-sided crate just for the quarantine experience, but in retrospect, I regret that decision. Which I’ll explain in a subsequent post.

In Nalu’s case, he ended up having to spend the night in the airport quarantine station and get transported to Halawa in the morning because I guess we arrived too late for van transport from the airport quarantine holding facility to the Halawa quarantine center. For those who don’t live in Hawaii or know Oahu, Halawa is like 30 minutes away from the Honolulu International Airport. This is why I recommend the earlier your arrival, the better. To this day, Nalu has a phobia of being crated unless we are in my car, or it’s bed time. To this day, recalling that entire experience of handing him over at the airport quarantine door gives me lightweight PTSD.

None of us knew what was happening; and it was like having to send our own human child into an operating room because the whole experience was so foreign and poorly explained. And when I got back to Oahu, I had to be in my own two-week quarantine and couldn’t even directly go visit my baby. I had to send in my friend as a surrogate visitor temporarily. But lucky for you, thanks to this blog, the airport quarantine experience won’t be foreign and terrifying. And I assume you hopefully won’t be in your own mandatory 2-week quarantine upon arrival now that it’s not 2020 anymore. I’m pretty sure I was harassing the quarantine station the following morning to make sure my baby got delivered to Halawa safely, LOL.

All that being said, you should now be prepped for takeoff!