Princess Zelda Arrives in Mexico

We boarded our second flight in Miami around 9am. It was a very typical process — wait for your boarding group, present your ticket, get on the plane. I have flown dozens of times before on all types of flights: domestic, international, and through all manner of airport. Flying doesn’t make me nervous. But as I stepped onto this flight, I was nervous. Not for myself, but for my dog Zelda, who at that moment was supposed to be safely stored in the cargo hold.

For the uninitiated (including, prior to this experience, myself), flying a pet with you to a foreign country is… not a cute process. Silly me, thinking that I can simply bring my dog to the vet a few days before our flight and then pack her in a crate as if she were the clothing in a suitcase. My mom, a vet, had warned me that it’s much more involved than that, but I had yet to understand the difference between “checking pets” and shipping them as cargo. It turns out, at least on this airline, that pets cannot simply be placed in the cargo hold with your other belongings (though this had previously been true, and airline shipping standards have changed drastically even in the past 5 years). Zelda, with her lanky frame and unforgettable ears, was unfortunately too large to fit in the cabin with us, so short of driving over 10 days in an unfamiliar country with a less-than-reliable car, I had no choice but to jump through the hoops of trying to ship her as live freight — internationally.

I’ll spare you the details of my anxiety-ridden days, where every day introduced a new rule (she has to have a customs broker! the original flight proposed by the airline won’t work, actually!) and new paperwork I needed to fill out. Opaque rules not listed anywhere on the internet haunted my inbox. Outdated advice on Reddit threads and forums consoled me until I learned the rules had changed (again!). As the costs and anxiety mounted, I considered canceling our flights and our trip altogether; it was simply outlandish to think that I should entrust my pup to someone else’s care for three months. But, as the “dog mom” stickers on water bottles and bumpers affirm, leaving my furry child behind was simply out of the question.

The bluest ocean I have ever seen!

We hit the beach while we waited for Zelda to get through customs.

So our first day in Mexico was spent anxiously wasting time in Cancun, awaiting the text from the customs broker that Zelda had been cleared and we could have her. In the end, it took 9 hours from the time our flight landed to when she was ready. She was clearly nervous when she got to us, having been through no less than 36 hours of transit and probably sitting in hot, loud warehouses for the majority of the time. But after a day of lounging around and acclimating to the heat, she’s grown used to our new home. She’s beat a hasty retreat from two hissing cats; she’s obsessed with exploring our spacious, tamarind-laden courtyard; and she’s working through the stinky phase of adjusting to a new food too quickly.

Most of all, she has endeared herself to the locals, who ask constantly if she’s a xoloitzcuintli. Xolos, as they’re known for short, are a locally revered breed who are said to help transport the dead to the afterlife. (You may recognize the goofy xolo Dante from Coco, who is able to be with Miguel in the afterlife world despite the fact that he isn’t dead!) Prior to our arrival, we assumed xolos were only hairless dogs, but apparently there’s a type that has a short coat, too. She fits many of the descriptors of xolos, down to the black spots on her tongue. I’m not going to do a DNA test so we’ll never find out for sure if she’s got any xolo in her, but it is fun to think that she’s a prized pup around here. A doggy angel, if you will!

She still thinks she’s a lap dog.

Here, seen begging for attention by refusing to let me work.