Chilly in Chile

Echo in front of the Ritz Carlton in Santiago, Chile - July 2008

So its been a crazy couple of weeks and then on top of that having to leave for Chile to shoot a commercial. The trip actually ended up not being so bad. The flight was bearable - could have been worse, 15 hours on the plane, at least I didn't have some crazy person next to me. I went down there with another trainer Tracy, we stayed at The Ritz Carlton, who went out of their way to make our stay nice and comfortable. They had dog beds in the room, dog bowls with a selection of dog cookies! It was also winter in South America and below freezing when we got off the plelane at 6:30am, glad I thought to check and packed my down jacket, gloves, and hats. It did warm up somewhat during the day and Tracy and I took many a stroll through the city with out dogs. The nice part about Santiago was that you could take your dog into Starbucks :)


So we shot the Ragu pasta sauce commercial with Tracy's dog Finn (Echo was just a back up in case we needed another dog) and again everyone from the director to the little kid we worked with was so nice. It was a short trip - we flew in on Saturday - shot the commercial on Tuesday and flew home Wednesday night. Unfortunately every day was work, so we had no time to sight see - although on our last day, because we had a night flight we did manage to make it to a local handicraft market, which was well worth it, otherwise our souvenirs would all have been purchased at the airport gift shop!

I was a little nervous about the flight - especially after reading a book called Outliers and the section about the Colombian pilots who crashed their passenger jet into the ground in New York because they felt intimidated by the air traffic controllers! Okay, well their was little more to it than that but that's the gist if it. That and I have an uncontrollable urge to watch any and all TV shows/documentaries on aircraft and especially them crashing. So a couple of weeks before the flight to Chile I had watched this show on Discovery about plane crashes. I would have to say that in the case of flying and being a passenger, ignorance really is bliss. It is so much more comforting not having any idea about all these variables that can down your plane!

Safely home, the dogs - non the worse for wear - after spending close to 20 hours in a crate, not an accident between them. It makes such a huge difference having dogs that are comfortable in a crate to begin with - at one point I saw the fork lift truck lift Finn and Echo in their crates to move them and Echo was laying down, chilling...No big deal. This should be a reminder to everyone that crate training your dog from the beginning is beneficial in so many ways. And surprisingly the staff at cargo in Chile were much nicer handling the dogs than the Los Angeles based staff - all of the dogs travel was arranged by Pacific Pet, much easier having a broker handle all the necessary paperwork than having to do it yourself.

The worst thing that happened on the entire trip occurred when leaving Santiago, we ventured through Duty Free. And of course they had bags of Cadburys mini chocolate bars and of course I bought a bag. So for the next 15 hours I proceeded to eat them, in the end having to give the remains to Tracy and telling her to not give them back. She then proceeded to share them with this little Chilean lady sitting one seat across from her - she was so tiny her feet didn't touch the ground when she was seated. And there she was like a little kid eating chocolate and swinging her legs.

This was the most sightseeing we got to do - the cargo parking lot at the airport in Santiago, Chile...I think the dogs were worried we might get run over! But hey you can see the Andes mountains in the background.