The Adventures of Stella Luna: The First Flight (The Airport #2)

Hey, guys! Welcome back to my tales of my first-ever experience at the airport! This is a continuation of the Christmas Eve post, so if you haven't read that, you may want to start there, but here goes nothing!

To get onto the plane itself, I had to walk down this long, metal, square tube thing. It was carpeted with thin carpet for part of it, but as we walked further down, it swapped to metal and my nails click-clacked on it as we continued.

I had no idea what was coming.

"Welcome!" The first flight attendant smiled at me as I boarded. "Who's this beautiful dog?"

"This is Stella." Mama smiled. I just looked up at the lady, sniffing the air around her. Smells okay. I eyed her, then continued down the aisle as Mama said "forward."

Repeatedly, I turned to the seats I was passing, sniffing them, but Mama gently tugged my head away. "No sniffing," she said, reminding me that I was getting distracted. Right. I raised my head a bit and continued, passing the seat that Mama was supposed to sit in. She had to stop me from going all the way to the back of the plane because I was very curious and forgot to pay attention.

Funny how I kept doing that.

As a new service dog, Mama doesn't expect me to be perfect all the time. Even service dogs who have been in service for years don't do everything right. It's the same idea as doing one thing wrong in a multitude of tasks, though. It's okay to mess up every once in a while, as long as you correct yourself and move forward.

The other flight attendant came up from the back of the plane to greet people as they got on, but she eyed me suspiciously as Mama encouraged me to walk between the chair and the seat in front of it. She had the window seat on the right side of the plane.

Trying my best to listen, I attempted to squeeze, but I got stuck halfway. Trying again to listen, I put one paw up on the seat, but Mama told me to get it off. "Beep beep," she said. I backed up into the aisle. Squeezing herself and her long legs into the seat, she pulled me up onto the seat and into her lap. "Guess we gotta do it this way," she mumbled, and gently nudged me to lay down. "Curl," she said, but I didn't like that command so I decided not to listen.

And guess what? She carefully made me do it anyway.

Pulling at my butt and legs, she folded me into a donut position. Huffing, I rested my nose on my tail, eyeing the vents above us warily. The high-pitched sound of air squeezing its way out was horrific, but Mama needed me to handle it, so I did.

The flight attendant from the back of the plane came over and stepped into the seat, letting others pass behind her. "She can't be in the middle seat," she told Mama. "She has to stay in your lap or on the floor."

Mama nodded, squeezing me closer to her as I started shaking, eyeing everything around us. I wanted to spread out and sniff to calm myself down, but Mama kept me close, gently weaving her fingers into my fur and rubbing me. I could smell her anxiety rising, but I was already on her lap, I couldn't do anything more for her other than lick her face. Which admittedly might calm me down, but I never remember that licking helps me calm down when I'm stressed.

Mama shifted uncomfortably a few times, and the flight attendant kept coming over to check to see if I'd slipped into the middle seat, which Mama had to keep pulling my paws out of. By the end, Mama was aggravated and quite cramped, seeing as though her knees hit the back of the seat in front of her.

There really was no way that I could've fit there without Mama having been curled up into a ball the whole time. And with the flight attendant repeatedly checking to see where I was, there was no way that I could slip into the empty seat next to her either, even in the floorspace.

Not that Mama seemed to be even close to letting me break the rules in the name of comfortability.

By the end of the flight, as we waited for them to finish hooking up the door to the plane itself, a girl from the row behind us leaned over the back of the middle seat, asking, "What breed is she?" to Mama. Mama just shrugged, smiling at her. "We don't know."

Thankfully, the girl didn't ask any more questions, but Mama kept smiling at me as we got off the plane.

"You were a good girl," she said, briefly rubbing my head.

And that was the end of my first plane ride!