If you have met me or Chase (my husband), then you have certainly heard about our two dogs. We have two golden retrievers, Posie (6) and Peaches (3), and we are absolutely obsessed with them (as any dog owner should be with their animals)!
We have been given the amazing opportunity to relocate to Lyon, France, for my job, and we will be there for two years starting in January of 2027. With this amazing opportunity comes a lot of change and, unfortunately, a lot of costs. I work for a relatively small company, so they are helping to pay for things where they can, but one thing they are not able to help cover is the cost of getting my sweet goldens over there.
There are more affordable options for getting large dogs overseas, with the most common being transporting them in the cargo hold of a commercial plane. And honestly, that option terrifies us. Even though airlines have procedures in place for safely transporting animals, at the end of the day we would be handing our dogs over at the airport and trusting that everything goes exactly as it is supposed to for the next several hours.
They would be separated from us, put into their crates, moved through an incredibly loud and unfamiliar airport environment, handled and transported by people they don’t know, loaded underneath the plane, and then spend an entire international flight completely alone. Once we hand them over, we have no way to see them, check on them, comfort them if they’re scared, or know what is happening with them until we are reunited on the other side.
While we know the majority of dogs who fly in cargo arrive safely, things can and do go wrong. There are stories of pets becoming extremely distressed, being injured trying to get out of their crates, being mishandled or lost during connections, and, in rare and heartbreaking cases, pets becoming seriously ill or dying during air travel. Knowing that we would be sitting in the cabin while our girls were underneath us, potentially terrified, and we would have absolutely no way to get to them is honestly unbearable—especially knowing Peaches’ history with severe anxiety.
And if you think I am just being an overly anxious dog mom (which, to be fair, I am), feel free to look up some other people’s experiences flying their pets in cargo to see where some of our fear comes from. There are plenty of successful stories, and we completely recognize that, but there are also some genuinely heartbreaking ones. We have probably read way too many of them at this point, but once you’ve read enough stories about pets being injured, lost, mishandled, or becoming extremely distressed, it becomes really hard not to picture your own dogs in that situation.
Knowing our girls and their backgrounds, we just don’t feel comfortable taking that chance if there is any way we can avoid it.
After doing a probably unhealthy amount of research, I found some other options that make us feel much more comfortable. Services like BARK Air and K9 Jets allow large dogs to actually fly in the cabin with their owners rather than underneath the plane. Instead of handing them over and hoping everything goes smoothly, they would be right there with us the entire time. We could see them, comfort them, and most importantly know with our own eyes that they are safe.
Unfortunately, being the boutique services that they are, they also come with a very large price tag—around $10,000 per ticket, with each ticket covering one human + one dog. With two goldens, that means we need two tickets.
And yes, I already called to see if I could fly alone, leave my husband to carry ALL of our bags, and just buy one ticket for myself and two dogs. They said no… understandably.
On top of the actual flights, there are also quite a few expenses that come with legally moving dogs from the U.S. to France, including vet appointments, making sure their microchips and rabies vaccinations meet EU requirements, international health certificates, USDA endorsement, and all of the other fun paperwork that comes with internationally relocating two animals.
For some background on our girls and why we feel so strongly about getting them there as safely and comfortably as we can:
Chase and I purchased Posie in 2020, but we joke that she was the most expensive rescue ever. When we received her, she was severely underweight and underfed and had burn marks on her neck that we could only assume were from a cigarette. She very quickly became our entire world.
Then, in 2023, we rescued Peaches from a puppy mill. She had a bad case of worms that lasted nine months, along with many other health problems stemming from neglect. Unfortunately, that neglect has also transformed into pretty severe anxiety. When she is left alone and scared, she will pull out her own hair as a coping mechanism.
After everything these two have already been through, the idea of putting them through a long international travel day without us there to reassure them is just really difficult for us. Having the ability to sit with them in the cabin, keep them calm, and know exactly where they are throughout the entire trip would give us an incredible amount of peace of mind.
I fully realize that even having the ability to consider an option like this is a luxury. We are incredibly lucky to have this opportunity to live abroad, and asking for help with something like this is not something we take lightly. But these two are our family, and there was never a world where moving to France meant leaving them behind.
All of the money raised will go toward getting Posie and Peaches safely to France—primarily purchasing our tickets on one of these in-cabin air services, along with their required veterinary appointments, health certificates, and travel documentation.
Our goal is simply to get our girls to our new home for the next two years safely and with as little stress as possible.
(We can figure out how we’re paying for the return flight when we get to that point lol.)
Thank you SO much to anyone willing to donate or even just share this. We appreciate it more than you know, and I will happily repay you in as many pictures of Posie and Peaches traveling to France as humanly possible!!
