This is a story about a dog and an airplane. The dog is Ubu, a 14-year-old lab-shepherd mix, color black. The airplane is a 1980 Cheyenne I, color white with a brown stripe. The two met just after my wife, Cathy, and I acquired the Cheyenne about five years ago. Ubu had developed a love of flight in a wonderful Cessna 340 we owned before the Cheyenne. We had taken a seat out of the 340 to accommodate him on the floor. He could not manage the steps, though, and you had to pretty much throw him into the cabin, while all four of his walking appendages windmilled against the fuselage or pummeled the cargo hand assigned to get him boarded (me).
The Cheyenne proved more to his liking and refined tastes. He could bound up the steps and found plenty of room to sleep without requiring any furniture removal. The dog proved so eager that he would begin whining and wagging his tail when we drove anywhere near our home FBO in Tampa. All landings provoked noisy commentary from the pooch. He would often leap forward between the passenger seats to congratulate the pilots and indicate his overall satisfaction with this pleasurable way for a dog to travel. When we arrived back home from a flight, he would stand at the doorway as the airstairs were lowered, surveying his empire with a distant and dismissive gaze. Familiar linemen would approach with some caution.
Inevitably, Ubu and his human companions have grown older. At 14, he had become noticeably more subdued. He had lost his hearing. It happened almost overnight. His gait and enthusiastic rush around started to wobble. Cathy decided that whatever traveling we would do, we would do in our airplane and with our dog. If that couldn't happen and I had to go on the airlines, she would stay home with Ubu.
The dog was already well traveled. He'd been to New York and New Orleans and New Hampshire and Chicago. Cathy decided that he should revisit his old haunts whenever possible, so we kept an eye out for professional reasons to travel to these favorite destinations.
When our friend Phil turned 60 and his wife invited us to New York for an extravagant surprise dinner, we remembered Phil's love of dogs. We packed for the trip and signaled to Ubu that he was on the passenger manifest. He was appropriately ecstatic. We flew from Tampa to Teterboro, rented a car and drove into the city. We checked surreptitiously into the same hotel as the birthday celebrant, waited for dusk, then knocked on his door. As he came to answer the knock, we scurried down the hall, leaving the bewildered dog and puzzled Phil to stare at each other with looks of astonished, but vague, recognition.
Cathy decided that such an enthusiastic swimmer as Ubu should have a swim in the Pacific Ocean to match his aquatic exploits in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. Last April we found an excuse to go to San Francisco and set out, the three of us, to cross the country for a dip. We flew from Tampa to Greenville, Texas, for a refueling stop. The airport was chosen for its best fuel price.
