Saving Sadie Read online

  If I’d thought I’d connected with a lot of new people and widened Sadie’s sphere of influence at our local Christmas parades and other events, I could only imagine how much farther our message was being broadcast now. Sometimes I had to pinch myself. Here I was, just an unassuming girl from small town Wisconsin, rubbing shoulders with Hollywood’s movers-and-shakers and the entertainment industry elite.

  And it’s all because of Sadie, I thought, then sent up a silent prayer for the angels to watch over her and keep her safe while I was gone. The truth was, I really missed her and my three other fur babies, and couldn’t wait to get back home to see them again and tell them all about my trip.

  Barbara and I barely had a free moment to talk during the party, but when we had dinner at our hotel later that night, she asked me if I’d like to join her for another gifting party, this time at the pre-Oscars party in Hollywood in March. I immediately said yes, even without being sure I could juggle my work schedule and arrange pet-sitting with Jeff. I’ll find a way to make it work somehow, I promised myself. Opportunities like this don’t come around every day, and I’ve learned from Sadie that sometimes you just need to take that leap of faith, cross your fingers (and paws!), and have confidence that it will all work out.

  * * *

  On my flight to California for the Oscars gifting party a few weeks later, I sat next to a beautiful, vivacious young woman named Lisa who was traveling with her boyfriend, and also with her dog, a scruffy little mutt named Angel. We got to talking and I was intrigued to find out how she’d gotten permission to bring her dog on board the flight. She explained that Angel was traveling as a “comfort animal” that she needed to have with her so she felt able to fly.

  I didn’t want to pry by asking her what specific condition she needed the dog for, but the seed was definitely planted in my mind in terms of how I might be able to fly with Sadie and get permission for her to sit with me in the cabin. Hmmm, comfort animal, I thought. Sadie certainly fits that bill.

  Our experience at the pre-Oscars gifting party on the first of March was very similar to our experience at the party before the Golden Globes—a whirlwind of meeting people, spotting celebrities (Could that be Tom Cruise standing in the corner?), talking about Sadie, promoting GooFurr, and handing out free samples. The party was held at the Montage Beverly Hills, a luxury five-star hotel just off the famed Rodeo Drive, and again as we set up inside the elegant ballroom, I was in absolute awe of the glamour, money, prestige, and influence parading before our eyes.

  One of the people who stopped by to chat with us was Carolyn Hennesy, the Emmy-Award-nominated actress from General Hospital and True Blood. Carolyn is also a deeply committed animal rights activist who hosts her own syndicated radio show, Animal Magnetism. We got to talking and Carolyn fell in love with Sadie’s story. She couldn’t wait to book Sadie and me as call-in guests on her show, and we promised to make arrangements as soon as we were both back home and could compare calendars. As Carolyn walked away and I looked down at her business card in my hand, I thought about what an extraordinary adventure I was on; the only thing that could have made it better would have been having Sadie there with me, along to enjoy this wild, crazy, exciting ride.

  At the end of this second brief trip to California, Barbara had yet another surprise for me up her sleeve. She had been invited to appear on the morning talk show The Balancing Act on cable TV’s Lifetime network to talk about GooFurr, and she wanted me to come along. Only this time, she asked me to bring Sadie, too, so Sadie could be part of an in-studio demonstration showing viewers how to use GooFurr.

  Rather than another trip to California, this would instead involve a trip to Pompano Beach, Florida, where The Balancing Act was filmed. If I said yes, we’d need to make arrangements quickly because they planned to film the segment on March 18 and it was already March 2.

  Yes, I told Barbara as we shared a taxi to the airport, let’s do it. I’m not sure about the logistics, but I’m willing to take that leap of faith to make it happen. Sadie had already made numerous local TV appearances, but national television exposure had always been one of our “bucket list” goals. Now, at last, it was about to happen. The magic of Sadie, I thought as I sat back in my seat and smiled. There she goes again, making amazing things happen.

  As soon as I got home, my first task was to figure out how to make Sadie my “companion animal” on the flight to Florida. I did some research online and learned that companion animals are technically known as Emotional Support Animals (ESA) and that any animal, dog, cat, bird, hamster, and so forth, could fill the role. ESAs did not need to be service animals or have any special training, they only had to be well behaved and “provide therapeutic benefit to its owner through companionship and affection.” Well that described Sadie to a T!

  In order for an animal to travel as an ESA, the owner had to have a letter from a doctor or registered therapist stating the person’s diagnosis and recommending the use of an ESA. Fortunately, this process could all be done online. I paid my fee, downloaded the questionnaire, filled it out, and emailed it back to be reviewed by a therapist. Following the review of the questionnaire came a phone interview with a registered therapist, who asked me a lot of questions about why I felt I couldn’t travel without Sadie.

  I thought I did a pretty good job with my answers, explaining why I needed Sadie close to me to comfort and support me while I flew, but obviously, I was wrong—at the end of the phone interview, the therapist informed me that, in her estimation, I did not “suffer from an ailment that would benefit from the presence of an Emotional Support Animal.” Ouch. Well, at least they refunded my application fee.

  If I had learned one thing from Sadie (and in truth I had learned thousands of things from Sadie), it was to never give up, to keep trying, no matter what, so, undaunted, I applied for the ESA certificate again, paid the fee once more, downloaded and completed the questionnaire, and waited for another phone interview with a therapist (happily, it was a different therapist this time).

  In this second interview I tried to sound more emotional and melodramatic, emphasizing that I couldn’t leave Sadie alone because I feared that someone would hurt her, that we had never been separated because I relied on her to help me manage my stress, et cetera. I really laid it on thick, and it must have worked, because this time, I passed the test! Apparently, in the span of a few days, I had managed to develop an ailment serious enough to require help! Yay, me!

  Three days later, I received an email with the pdf letter from the therapist certifying that Sadie was my Emotional Support Animal and that I needed her with me when I traveled.

  Letter in hand, I phoned Southwest Airlines and arranged a flight for Sadie and me to Fort Lauderdale for mid-March. When I explained that I’d be traveling with my companion animal, this time they said, “Okay, no problem. A representative from the airline will meet you at the airport.” It really was that simple.

  “All right, Sadie, you’ve got southeastern Wisconsin in your back pocket,” I told her as I sat beside her on the floor and stroked her firmly from head to tail. “Now it’s time for the rest of the country to fall in love with you, too.” Of course, actually getting her on the plane and all the way to a TV studio in Florida twelve hundred miles away would bring lots more challenges, I realized, but we were ready for it. Sadie was proving every day that there was nothing she couldn’t do once she set her mind to it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Florida, Here We Come

  At last the day dawned, Sunday, March 16, for the trip to Florida to film our segment for The Balancing Act on cable TV’s Lifetime channel. I was so excited for Sadie to spread her wings (no pun intended) and experience this new adventure. We were up early, packed, organized, and on our way to Milwaukee’s Mitchell Field for our direct flight to Fort Lauderdale after saying good-bye to Jeff, who had kindly agreed to babysit for Sparky, Miss Kitty, and Kit Kat over the next couple of days.

  Amidst all the whirlwind of activity, I
had taken time to bathe Sadie the night before, so she would be even-more-than-her-usual beautiful when she made her national TV debut. I really wanted her to shine when the camera was on her, glowing bright and healthy beneath the lights for all the world to see.

  It had been nearly two years since she’d had the surgery to remove the bullet from her forehead and the cyst from her tail, so it had been a long time since I’d placed her in my bathtub and washed her like a child, but I did again this night, filling the tub half full with warm water and some lavender essential oil, then lifting Sadie in my arms and carefully lowering her in until her limbs and lower body were covered. She seemed surprised that we were doing this again, as she gazed straight at me with her soft, round, amber eyes, large and dilated in the low evening light. And yet within those eyes I recognized patience, trust, and above all else, love. “It’s okay, girl,” I reassured her. “Every celebrity diva should get a little pampering before her big day.”

  I rubbed some baby shampoo between my palms and gently soaped her up, squeezing the suds through her thick, wet fur and rinsing with cups of water. For the first time since Barbara suggested the trip to Florida, I began to have some doubts. Sadie was always so mellow; nothing ever seemed to faze her, but we had never tried something like this before. What if it’s too much for her? What if she becomes traumatized and starts to panic? What if we just can’t get her on the plane? I wondered, had this been a crazy, stupid idea right from the beginning?

  I took Sadie’s left front paw in my hand and gently washed it with a soft cloth, then washed the left, cleaning carefully between her toes. It’s not too late to cancel, I thought suddenly. Barbara would be disappointed, but she could do the show without me. If I phoned her tonight, she’d have time to find someone else. I’m sure she would understand.

  As I started on Sadie’s back paws, she nudged me with her snout to get my attention. It was almost like she was saying, “Don’t give up on me, Mom. Don’t give up on us.” I had promised Sadie I would never quit, would never let her down. How could I go back on that now? “If we don’t go to Florida,” it was like Sadie was saying, “we risk missing out on something amazing.”

  “You’re right, Boo-boo,” I said as I rinsed the last of the shampoo and began to drain the tub. “If we back out now, we might miss something amazing. You’ve taught me to never be afraid of saying yes. You’ve taught me to embrace every opportunity with open arms.”

  The next morning, I made sure I had my Emotional Support Animal certificate in my purse; in fact, I had printed three copies and stashed them in various places on my person and around my luggage, just to be safe. I had never done anything like this trip before, and we couldn’t afford any last-minute glitches.

  When we got to the airport, the representative from Southwest, a fortysomething woman in a crisp orange, red, and blue uniform with her hair pulled back tightly in a bun, met us at a restaurant inside the airport as promised and we went over the logistics of actually getting Sadie onto the plane. Sadie utterly charmed the rep, sitting up in her wagon, squaring her shoulders, wagging her tail, eyes blazing as she seemed to follow our conversation.

  “Oh, who’s a good girl; are you a good girl?” the woman cooed, pursing her lips and squishing Sadie’s face between her palms, bringing her nose close to Sadie’s snout. “Who’s a very good girl?”

  Sadie barked and I stifled a laugh. Sadie was a natural mood-elevator, reducing middle-aged professionals to quivering bowls of puppy-loving Jell-O. After Sadie and the rep said their au revoirs, we made our way to the ticket counter, checked in for the flight, and passed through security, all without a hitch, even getting Sadie and her wagon through the metal detector. If it’s always this easy, I thought, we could travel a lot more, and a lot farther. Just think about all the new doors that might open for Sadie.

  We waited in the departure lounge for our flight to be called. The other passengers milling about were very curious about the black-and-tan dog in the special Saving Sadie wagon, and soon we had a throng of people stopping by to chat. I handed out Sadie’s business card to everyone within reach as I shared Sadie’s story.

  Some people expressed surprise that I was actually taking a disabled dog on a commercial air flight, so I used this opportunity to emphasize Sadie’s message about focusing on what you can do, not what you can’t. As the people walked away, I imagined them carrying Sadie’s message with them, like seeds of hope stuck to their skin, ready to be disbursed and take root in destinations across the country and around the world. This was the best sort of ripple effect—one touch from Sadie ultimately affecting people miles and miles away.

  A woman’s voice over the loudspeaker announced that our flight had begun pre-boarding anyone traveling with young children, the elderly, or others with special needs who required a little extra time. “That’s us, Boo-boo,” I told Sadie as I grabbed our bags and the handle of her wagon and pulled us through the departure gate and into the breezeway that connected the gate to the airplane.

  I couldn’t maneuver Sadie’s wagon through the doorway, into the plane, and down the aisle, so I parked Sadie in her wagon in the breezeway near the door. Beth, who had made the insert for Sadie’s Christmas sled, had also sewn a fantastic travel mat for Sadie, a tri-folding collapsible rectangle of fabric that worked as a liner in her wagon and could then be unfolded and refolded to make a mat for Sadie to sit on on the floor of the cabin at my feet during the flight.

  So, leaving behind Sadie in her wagon, I grabbed the mat, went in and found us a seat in the bulkhead (Southwest doesn’t do assigned seats, so I got to choose where we sat), stowed our luggage, and unfolded and put down the mat on the floor in front of my seat. Then I went back, got Sadie, carried her into the plane, settled her on the mat, went back out again, folded up the wagon, and checked it with the cabin crew.

  Whew! I was exhausted, and we hadn’t even left yet. “Next time,” I told Sadie, catching my breath as I buckled my seat belt, “we’ll fly first class, and your entourage can handle the logistics of getting you on board. We’ll leave it up to your ‘people.’” After all, if Sadie was going to be a celebrity, she would have “people,” right?

  Sadie had remained her normal relaxed, happy, chipper self throughout all the noise and stress and commotion of the morning, never bothered by all the new and confusing sights, sounds, and smells. It was only as the engines started to roar beneath our feet when we prepared to take off that she began showing some nerves.

  I think the vibrations from the engines actually bothered her more than the noise. Fortunately, I had brought along some essential oil, Peace & Calming, just in case, so I poured a little into the palm of my hand, warmed it up, and gently massaged her, which really helped to soothe her and settle her nerves.

  Airline rules only required that Sadie remain on the floor during takeoff and landing, so once we reached cruising altitude I lifted her from the floor and sat her in the window seat beside me. We had the full three-seat row in the bulkhead to ourselves, so we were able to move around without annoying other passengers.

  Once Sadie was in her seat she pressed her nose to the window and watched everything with intense interest, just as she would do in my SUV. I so wished she could tell me what she was seeing, how the world looked to her, before the plane pierced the heavy cloud cover and the stormy, dark blue-gray surface of southern Lake Michigan disappeared from view.

  It was incredible to think that Sadie had been destined to live out her life locked in a cold metal cage in a lonely animal shelter, her only view that of bare concrete floors and walls, and the shadowy figures of other animals that had also been abandoned and unloved. And now, here she was, soaring through the sky, quickly gaining altitude and stretching toward thirty-five thousand feet above the earth.

  The flight to Fort Lauderdale lasted just under three hours. When we landed, I waited for the plane to empty, then I left Sadie on the floor, took her mat, and went to get her wagon, which was waiting, tagged and folded, in
the breezeway just beyond the door. I unfolded and set up the wagon, arranged the fabric insert, and parked it near the door. Then I went back, got Sadie, and carried her to the wagon. As I wheeled her and our luggage down the breezeway to the gate, I felt a sense of both amazement and relief. We did it! Sadie had flown twelve hundred miles, nearly the full length of the country from north to south, from the cold, hard freeze of late spring Wisconsin to the lush, fragrant, citrus-scented tropics of the Florida coast. “For a dog that’s supposedly disabled, Boo-boo,” I told her, “you sure do get around!”

  Barbara, who had earlier flown in from Hawaii, was waiting to pick us up in front of the airport. When she and Sadie met, it was love at first sight! Barbara had invited Sadie to be GooFurr’s “spokes-puppy” without ever meeting her in person, so it was especially gratifying to see how well they hit it off! If Sadie could talk, I knew she would thank Barbara for inventing something that made it so much easier to take her pills and supplements, and she would especially thank her for making it in her favorite flavor—cat food salmon!

  We had booked our rooms at a pet-friendly hotel, but once we arrived I realized that “pet-friendly” did not necessarily mean “Sadie-friendly.” Once we checked in at the front desk, we had to wheel Sadie in her wagon through the whole hotel, then struggle to get the wagon across the sand to the other building where our room was located, then up the elevator and down a long hallway to our room. When Sadie needed a potty break, I had to pack her up in the wagon, go down the hall, down the elevator, outside, and through the sand to a private place where she could relieve herself. Definitely a huge hassle.

  That night Barbara, Sadie, and I went to dinner at a restaurant (pet-friendly, or so they said) on the water and had a lovely meal, soaking up the warm, fresh, Atlantic breezes and listening to the sizzle of the surf slapping the sand. “Thank you,” I said to Barbara as I sliced into my grilled red snapper. “This is a dream come true.”