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.
Ubu spent a pleasant half hour sniffing blue bonnets while we got gas and he was then eager to reboard for the trip to Santa Fe where our friends, Rob and Ellyn, live with their dogs, Otis and McGregor. The former is a Portuguese water dog and the latter a border collie. The dogs had never met before.
After a choppy ride, which fazed Ubu not one bit, we were welcomed to the great Southwest. The dogs got along mostly well, except for the occasional outbreak of growling and baring of teeth. The adults did exceptionally well, as they always do, and we were sad to leave the next morning for Oakland. The winds sensed our reluctance to depart; they were right on the nose at 40 knots. This put our range close to the actual distance and prompted a look at AirNav.com. Of all places, Bullhead City, Arizona, popped up as a reasonable refueling stop. We’ve made the SAF-OAK trip nonstop before, but there aren’t a lot of alternates in the mountains east of the Bay Area and we were in no rush to be anxious about endurance. We set sail almost straight west from Santa Fe and were soon descending over moon-like terrain into an airport I had never heard of, much less landed at, before.
A right downwind over the reservoir put us safely on Runway 16, but I couldn’t see the FBO. The tower announced that the gas was “down the hill,” and, sure enough, we taxied down the steepest airport incline I’ve experienced to the FBO. Several VFR flights were inbound and the reason soon became clear. Right across the river next to the airport was Nevada and its gaming establishments. We shut down and got out. Ubu and I expressed our mutual confusion at finding such a jumble of visual cues (gaming hotels, desert, river, shimmering heat and an FBO at the bottom of a hill).
Refueled and onward, we got to Oakland by early afternoon, rented a car at Business Jet Center and had a few great days at the venerable Fairmont Hotel, which like many hotels these days is definitely dog-friendly. Several convention goers found me and the dog lying in the grass outside the Fairmont’s front door during the meeting, prompting a series of lame jokes and jibes.
Cathy took Ubu to Bodega Bay, scene of the movie “The Birds,” and he got his swim while I went to a conference. His lame frame had to be coaxed and his immersion was more wading than dog paddling, but his feet met the Pacific.
Ubu was definitely fading now, but we had taken him to New Orleans before and when I had a talk to give there in May, we said, “why not?” In the old days, before having a dog travel with you became fashionable, we had to stay in low-end hotels. But no longer.
This time we were assigned the high cotton hotel and lucked into a room close by the elevator and near the back door. All this worked out well for dog walking.
As spring worked its way into summer, our chances for getting old Ubu up to his beloved New Hampshire seemed to be diminishing rapidly. Oh, we thought, how he enjoyed the cool air, a respite from Tampa in the summer, and how he loved to swim in the pond and lie in the grass. Cathy became obsessed with getting the dog up to his sweet New England for one last time.
A shot of steroids did the trick. And over the Memorial Day weekend, we made the flight from Tampa to Delaware to pick up our daughter and her husband and make it to New Hampshire. What a night we had. And what a landing, too. The winds were 340 at 28 gusting to 32, which favored Runway 36 at Lebanon. Too bad a Mooney had misjudged a crosswind at another airport and ripped the left main gear off. He decided to do a wheels up landing on LEB’s 36, which meant we were assigned Runway 25, a 90-degree crosswind. I elected to make the approach, but to be quick on the go-around if I had a hard time making the airplane go where I wanted it to. We lucked into a lull and landed without trouble. It was sad unloading the airplane with the disabled Mooney in full view.
But, we got the dog back to his paradise one more time. And we got to have some time for our summing up. I was grateful for the long goodbye. Supported by steroids and plagued by decreasing mobility, Ubu soldiered on much longer than anybody anticipated. That fine stalwart had three more flights to New Hampshire before it was all over. When we stopped for gas on the way home after New Year’s Day, he had no strength left to even contemplate getting out for a walk and a sniff. So I carried him over to the grass at Wilmington, North Carolina, so that he could relieve himself.
We decided that we’d let nature take its course unless it looked like Ubu was in pain. He continued to eat enthusiastically and his eyes still had their familiar glow, so we kept our course. He always waited to be hauled outside before going to the bathroom. He knew.
Our trips dwindled with his health, but Cathy and I didn’t mind. We took turns seeing after the dog. The airplane went in for paint. Ubu never saw the new paint scheme. One day my wife came home mid-day, stroked Ubu under his chin and gave him a sip of water. When she checked on him 10 minutes later he was gone.
The airplane feels different now. It’s taking some time to get used to the new colors. That’s the easy part. The big difference is the glaring vacancy on the passenger manifest. Sometimes I’ll look back at the spot where he used to lie on his Spuds McKenzie beach towel and think of all the fun we had with a noble creature who loved to fly.
