Apollo

After a rather different year last year-my wife, Colleen stayed home to deal with a personal family matter that required one of us to stay in Canada for the entire school year - this year has started in a much better way for me personally as Colleen has been able to return to Neuchâtel and mee this year's students. In fact, on her second day back, she joined us for dinner as my Advissee group had the first of their Advisee dinners for the year. The personal family matter has been attended to and all is well again.

Now that Colleen is here with me, we both realize how much we miss our dog, Apollo (and our two cats). Apollo made the trek over with us in the summer of 2009; however, it was quite an ordeal. As we were preparing to make the move from Ontario to Switzerland, I discovered that Air Canada will not fly animals during the summer months, unless they are tiny animals that can ride in the cabin with you. Apollo is a big dog. He is a rescue dog and we were told that he was an 'Akita', a Japanese shepherd. However, afer doing some research, I am not convinced that this is his breed. He has a German Shepherd head and the colouring and body type of a Belgian Shepherd. And he came into our life at either four months or sixteen months of age - two documents we received could not agree on his birth date. The month was the same (November) but the year was different. I believe the latter document is the correct one because when we got him, he seemed fully grown and really has not changed in size since that time.

In any case, since Air Canada would not fly Apollo to Switzerland, we turned to Swiss International Airlines. Because the Europeans love their pets (sometimes, it seems, more than they like humans) I was certain that they would agree to fly him over here. I was right. However, the next challenge was that Swiss did not fly out of Toronto (they do, but the Toronto – Montreal leg is through Air Canada, so I was back to the original problem). So, I contacted Via Rail and was just about to purchase our tickets for our train ride to Montreal when a second Via Rail agent informed us that their policy on transporting animals in the summer months was the same as Air Canada’s. Okay, so now what?

This really left us only one option – rent a van and drive to Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport in Montreal. This is what we did. Everything that day seemed fine…the drive, the check-in at the airport, the flight…until we landed in Zurich. A most unfriendly customs officer informed us that we were missing a document from our veterinarian and until we produced it, Apollo was not getting into Switzerland. Fortunately, there is a veterinarian centre at the airport – I suppose for such occurrences. The people there couldn’t have been more helpful and friendlier. Colleen and I left Apollo behind with them, although I am sure he was quite anxious and confused, and we headed for Neuchâtel. Our plan was to fax the missing document, a blank copy of which had been provided to us at the Zurich airport, to our vet in Canada, have it completed and faxed back to the authorities at the Zurich airport, all in the same day, so that we could return that very day and retrieve Apollo. We had landed at 6 a.m. in Zurich, so even getting to Neuchâtel later that morning meant that, with the six hour time difference, we still had to wait awhile for the vet’s office to open back home.

Fortunately, we were able to get all of this accomplished later that day but then the challenge was to get back to the Zurich airport (normally a two hour drive from Neuchâtel) before the Veterinary centre closed at 7 p.m. It was already late afternoon and the rush hour traffic around Zurich can be as daunting as in any large North American city. I phoned the vet several times to give him our location en route and to let him know we were coming and that we desperately wanted to pick up Apollo that day. Again, he and his staff could not have been nicer. We arrived about 20 minutes after 7 p.m., but the vet had very kindly waited for us. We signed the outstanding document, retrieved Apollo, who was so glad to see us, loaded him in our car and headed back to Neuchâtel. This was, as you can imagine, quite an exhausting day. We had begun our journey at 6 a.m. Toronto time, driven to Montreal, flown to Zurich, driven to Neuchâtel, back to Zurich and finally back to Neuchâtel. All in the same day and without much sleep, save for what we were able to get on the flight over.

So, you might ask, how is it that Apollo is back in Canada? Well, after spending the 2009-10 year here with that class and enjoying them very much, Colleen and I thought it was too much to expect to be back in Canada for four or five weeks in the summer and to leave Apollo in a kennel for that length of time (even though we had found a kennel he liked very much here called ‘The Dog Palace’! He was always the oldest male when we boarded him there during school trips, and so he was the ‘alpha’ male, and in charge of all the other dogs, according to the proprietors). So, in April of that year, I brought him back to Canada, via Montreal again on the return ticket with Swiss International. We stayed in a hotel near the airport in Montreal (Apollo was a hit with the staff – although it took some doing to find a hotel that allowed pets) and took a taxi to the train station the next morning to catch our Via Rail train to Toronto (it was April, so Via Rail permitted pet travel in cargo). I was in the train car next to his and he was clearly unhappy as I could hear him barking the whole way.

He got home finally and after deciding that this kind of travel was too hard on him, we made the decision that he would live with our sons when we returned for the following school year (last year) who were delighted to have him. Then, at the end of the summer, we had to make another decision about Colleen staying in Canada to attend to this personal family matter. So, last year, for me, as I said, was a different year – no Colleen, and no Apollo.

Apollo turns ten years old in November, and we are told that big dogs do not live as long as smaller dogs. When we see people here in Neuchâtel with their dogs - and many have them – we miss him even more. I have found that people who do not have pets, especially dogs, do not quite understand this emotional connection. It is uncanny how attached we get to our pets and how much they become a part of our lives. We miss Apollo very much, as I am sure our students who have pets at home miss theirs. He is living with my son and daughter-in-law who themselves got a puppy just a few months ago. Yes, Colleen and I have a grand-puppy. I am not sure how enamoured Apollo is with Stanley (a bichon-terrier, named after the Stanley Cup!) as he has lots of energy and wants to play with Apollo non-stop. Apollo tolerates Stanley, but only just. We look forward to seeing them both on our next visit home. Oh, and our sons and daughter-in-law too.