I call it the big hurt because my shoulders are about six inches wider than an airplane seat, and I can never straighten my legs, even for a moment, so after about an hour on a plane, I begin to get sore unless there's an empty seat next to me -- an increasingly rare phenomenon, although it did happen on two of my four flights this time. If I sit on the aisle, I get tagged by every drink cart and flight attendant's hip that goes by, plus I'm not thrilled with having some guy's crotch in my face while he rummages through the overhead compartment, or having old ladies use my headrest as a hand-hold as they make their way to the lavatory. I like the window seat, because besides liking to look out the window, I only have another person on one side of me and I can lean my head against the side of the plane to sleep, which I have to do because the headrest isn't high enough for me to just lean back, and my legs are too long for me to sit lower in the seat. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm a big guy, but I'm not abnormally large; that I can't sit comfortably on a plane shows the airlines' decided lack of respect for their customers, and what's more, the airport is the only place I ever go where I'm the tallest person there, which means that people bigger than me who can't afford first class simply don't fly, and they never get to travel overseas. I think it's discriminatory and that tall people should file a class action suit against the entire airline industry, run the airlines out of business, and usher in high speed trains as our preferred mode of transport. What it really comes down to is that flying is stupid, and America not having the world's fastest trains is ridiculous. Moving on...
My flight to Seattle was shorter than originally planned, by about an hour, for which I was very grateful, even if the tiny Asian girl sitting next to me made for a more comfortable flight. I had time to go to the airport food court for a burrito before picking up Phoenix from baggage services; he seemed content with the experience, but glad to get out of the crate. Once in the truck, he alternated between sleeping and quietly looking out the window, and was totally unphased by Bradley barking and snarling at him fromt the front seat.
Phoenix is kind of an old man, although I don't think he's actually that old. He's from Long Island, where he was abandoned presumably as a young dog and found by the guy that originally turned him over to me in March, after living with him for about five years. Unfortunately, the guy was kind of a dumbass -- nice guy, but just... yeah. He didn't tell me the dog's knees were blown out until I got there and saw his limp -- when you're about to drive for two weeks with an animal, his health problems are a good thing to know about ahead of time. But that was mildly annoying; what was really frustrating was that even though the guy knew his dog had joint problems, he continued to both overfeed him and to play roughly with him, so there I was watching this fat, gimpy dog getting slammed onto the concrete by this dipshit who thought that was how you showed a dog affection. I'm not sure which one of them I felt worse for, truthfully. This poor guy was crying and it was clear that it was really painful for him to give his dog up, but he had also been abusing the dog and just didn't know it.
The reason I was asked to take Phoenix was that the guy he lived with was moving to a third floor apartment in Kentucky and with his bad knees, Phoenix wouldn't have been able to go up and down the stairs. That alone wouldn't have been a problem in terms of placing him with someone, but Phoenix had also bitten several people, usually strangers reaching out to pet him, which is a totally inappropriate thing for a person to do, but under the law, dogs are expected to just take it. Instead of bringing Phoenix back to Washington, I took him to a shelter in Orange County, New York, because I didn't feel that his behavior warranted him coming to live with me. I also gave them a German shepherd with hip dysplasia, and took a golden retriever that had been beaten with a cane and burned with cigarettes for a few weeks by a degenerate alcoholic after her husband overdosed, leaving the dog with some 'people issues' that made her unsafe in a traditional home environment.
The people at the shelter loved Phoenix, but unfortunately he didn't love some of them and racked up more bite incidents while he was there, so four months later, I had to make good on my promise that I would take him back if he turned out to be non-adoptable due to behavior. And that's why yesterday afternoon, I found myself in the position of having to remove a big pit bull mix from his crate for an airport security check, with about a thousand people around me and nothing between them and the dog, having just realized that I hadn't seen the dog in months, that even when I did have him, it was only for a few hours, which he spent in the back of my truck, that I had no idea what kind of kennel stress he'd developed at the shelter, that I had spent no time walking him or familiarizing him with me at the airport before he was put into his crate and wheeled to the ticket counter by a skycap, that his issues at the shelter involved being in confined spaces, and that he had already snarled, lunged, and tried to bite me through the wire frame door of his crate. I wondered how badly I was about to be bitten and how much blood the airport bystanders were about to see, how many camera phones would soon be documenting my 'skill' with dangerous dogs. Fortunately, Phoenix did everything he needed to do, and I'm not a punchline on YouTube just yet.
