Leaving the EU: Olive the Dog
Legal immigration for the dog, abandoning ship on the Queen Mary, and a general disdain for border policies.
Olive, the family dog, is a European through and through, and has shown no enthusiasm for the repatriation of her humans to the United States. The noise and stir of gadgets being disassembled and boxes being packed arouses her from time to time to stand and sniff, but for the most part she prefers to keep her distance.
She has her reasons for being skeptical. In America, she will have no free education or health care, and public transportation is practically non-existent.
I’ve tried to explain to her several times that the free stuff in Europe costs somebody something, and that truly free markets can provide just about anything imaginable at a lower total cost to both buyer and seller. That the problem in American markets is that, not only are they not free, but are among the most captive in the world since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Alas, economics is not her strong suit, as is true of dogs generally, except perhaps for the Tyrolean Hound or the Austrian Pinscher.
Our timetable for moving has been far more hurried since we abandoned our plans to cruise home on Queen Mary II, the last true liner on the seven seas. The original idea was that, while the missus and I lounged about on the floating buffet with a round-the-clock happy hour, arriving at New York harbor refreshed and un-jet-lagged, Olive would hang with the pack in the kennel and remain the whole voyage at sea-level. This was a critical part of our travel plans, ever since I learned from a friend that dogs of her breed can explode at high altitudes.
I’ve since learned that it is not quite as dramatic as that, but short-nosed breeds have respiratory problems in the thinner atmospheres that can sometimes be fatal. To be fair, my friend might have stated it this way, and I simply misheard, preoccupied as I was with visions of high tea and low-stakes canasta on the HMS Who Cares, I’m Retired Now.
As I have accumulated over three months of annual leave (a veteran bureaucrat of more than thirty years, I learned long ago to take my vacations at work), the plan was that we would have time to relax, make a few excursions about the continent, and have our last Midsommar holiday in Sweden before returning to the New World. When I went to book our passage two months ago, there were still cabins available. The kennel, however, had a waiting list of eighteen months to two years.
“How was I supposed to know?”I replied to a wife beside herself with tears. “I didn’t even know I was going to retire eighteen months ago.” Several weeks have passed and I’m still perplexed that there evidently exists a subset of society so habituated to liner-travel that they know to schedule passage for their pets before their pets are even born. I was under the impression that the uber-rich have their own yachts, and set sail with whatever tigers, macaws, concubines and circus acts they feel like bringing aboard at the last minute. What’s the point of being rich, otherwise?
It turns out, fortunately, for dogs too large to fit beneath the seat in the passenger cabin, Lufthansa has a program for transporting dogs, even Frenchies, in a pressurized, climate-controlled, and ventilated cargo hold. The caveat is that at no point on the journey can the tarmac be thirty degrees Celsius (eighty degrees Fahrenheit) or higher. She takes off in Gothenburg, Sweden, where, if it gets that hot at all, will not be before August. Frankfurt, Germany, where she transfers, is not guaranteed, but would probably be OK. Washington, DC, where she lands, is almost certain to be a tropical swamp before Memorial Day.
Hence the flurry of activity around the house that Olive is doing her best to ignore. Unbeknownst to her, she leaves for Gothenburg this morning and will arrive two days hence at Dulles International Airport, where my daughter has graciously agreed to pick her up and care for her until we arrive nine days following.
We are double- and triple-checking the paperwork. She will be travelling under her EU passport — a birthright that doesn’t transfer to me or my wife. Unconditional birthright citizenship for humans is offered by only thirty countries, none of them in Europe. This is a proof of US superiority I’d love to throw in the face of my liberal friends, were the American president not trying, against his usual instincts, to bring this policy in closer alignment with those of the countries he despises. Meanwhile, no nation on earth has established a path to citizenship for owners of “anchor dogs,” which could have made the difference in where we retired.
Olive has her vaccinations and all the CDC paperwork that must accompany her throughout the journey. We tucked some extra copies in her luggage in case she chews up the originals. She can be spiteful of bureaucracy, which is one of the reasons we didn’t take her seven months ago on the big haul of precious metals from our apartment in Sweden to a vaulting service in Delaware. One cross-eyed look at a customs agent and poof! They confiscate a sizable portion of our meager net worth.
Our adventures in not exactly smuggling gold and silver, but almost, must be saved for another time, perhaps tomorrow. Today, our concern is getting little Olive across the border safely — and legally. The outgoing Director of Homeland Security is famous for shooting her own dogs when they get out of line, so far be it for us to leave an i un-dotted or a t un-crossed when it comes to the immigration of ours, especially given that she is — I’m sorry that this even has to be mentioned in 2026 — a dog of color.
We’re now on the train to Gothenburg. Before boarding, we took her out for one last elimination in the town she grew up in. Of course, she sniffed meticulously for several minutes before picking her spot. She is not the type of girl to defecate just anywhere.
Again, thoroughly European.