My Human Was Nervous. I Fell Asleep.

I did not know that we were emigrating.

I only knew that for some time my human had been doing the things humans apparently do when something large is coming.

She put papers on the table. Took them away again. Later looked for them in exactly the place she had put them. Bags stood about. The telephone rang more often. And a remarkable number of those conversations were about me.

That made me faintly suspicious. Not worried. Just attentive.

Humans become peculiar when they are worried. They walk through rooms without arriving anywhere, look at the same documents several times over, and ask questions whose answers they already know.

My human did all of it.

Eventually I understood at least part of it: we were going away. Very far away. To Dubai. And apparently I was the problem.

Not as a rule. As a rule I am rarely the problem. This time, however, somebody had decided that on the aircraft my human had researched, dogs were only allowed in the cabin up to a certain weight.

Eight kilograms. Carrier included. I came in just above that. From where I stood, an exceedingly petty distinction.

For my human it was more serious. Under no circumstances did she want me stowed anywhere other than with her during the flight. Least of all in the hold.

Then there was my nose. Or more precisely: its modest length.

Because pugs are among the short-nosed breeds, my human had read in her research about particular transport restrictions, and about the strain heat can put on us. The more she found out, the more certain she became of one thing:

We would not be travelling that way.

The only trouble was that she then reached a point of not knowing how we were to travel at all.

I noticed because she was on the telephone even more.

Then, for the first time, a name came up that I would hear rather often in the weeks that followed. SkySociety.

Naturally I had no idea what lay behind it. But I noticed that something changed.

My human was still busy. There were still papers and messages and questions. My vaccination record was checked. Documents were prepared. Shortly before the journey we visited an official vet.

But the worry in her voice grew slowly quieter.

For the first time she seemed to feel that it might actually work. That we really would get to Dubai together.

The day before the flight we drove from North Rhine-Westphalia to Munich.

A long drive. A hotel. An unfamiliar door. An unfamiliar floor. Different sounds in the corridor.

For humans that presumably means: the journey has begun. For a dog it means, to begin with, only that everything smells different.

But my human was there. So I slept.

The next morning she was awake early. Of course. Humans always sleep worse than dogs before an important day.

Bags again. The documents checked again. Again that quick glance at me, as though she had to make sure I had not vanished overnight.

Then the taxi came.

Munich slid past the window, and at some point we stopped not at one of the large airport buildings but at the Private Aviation Terminal.

Until that moment I had assumed this whole affair concerned mainly the two of us.

Then the door opened. And there were dogs. Several. That altered the situation considerably.

While the humans greeted each other and busied themselves with luggage, we did what dogs do in such situations.

We looked at one another. We drew closer.

We gathered the information for which humans presumably need names, professions, places of origin and several minutes of conversation.

The humans called it “getting acquainted”. We were comparatively quick about it.

For my human that seemed to be precisely the reassuring part. We met here, with space and quiet, before boarding the aircraft together.

So far I approved of this travel plan.

Then came security.

My human had spent weeks making sure I possessed every required document.

And now I was suddenly to take off my collar and lead.

I asked no questions.

Sooner or later a dog learns that humans have rules at airports whose deeper logic one need not understand.

Afterwards we got our things back and boarded a minibus.

We drove to passport control and then on across the airport.

Outside there were aircraft. Small aircraft.

My human looked through the window and smiled in a way I had rarely seen in the preceding weeks.

She told me later that what she thought in that moment was: When exactly did my life become one where I fly on a private jet?

I was lying at her feet.

From where I lay, the more unusual question was why she was making such a thing of it.

We had not even arrived yet.

As we boarded the aircraft, my human paused for a moment.

I did not.

I saw armchairs. Carpet. Blankets. Other dogs.

Those were pieces of information I could do something with.

The cabin was small and quiet. No long rows of seats. No crowds. Some dogs were already lying on the floor, others had settled themselves on the seats.

My human sat down. I stayed with her.

That was, so far, the most important part of this entire journey.

Then the door closed. The aircraft began to move.

And my human grew nervous again.

Only a little. But dogs notice “only a little”.

She watched me constantly. I saw her looking.

She wanted to know whether I was all right. Whether the noises bothered me. Whether the pressure was uncomfortable. Whether I was becoming frightened.

The aircraft rolled faster. The noises grew louder. For a moment something pressed me harder into my place. Then the floor lifted.

That was unusual.

I looked at my human. She looked at me. We were both still there.

So I lay down. A few minutes later, I was asleep.

That must have been a slightly strange moment for my human.

For weeks she had wondered how I would cope with this journey.

She had compared flight options, searched for rules, organised documents, made appointments, and worried about whether she could set out for her new life with her dog at all.

And now she was finally sitting in this aircraft.

Below us Germany grew smaller. Ahead of us lay more than six hours to Dubai.

And the creature around which a great deal of her worry had turned was asleep. Fast asleep.

The sun fell through the window onto my black coat.

At some point I woke up again.

The cabin had gone quiet. Everyone had found their place. The humans were talking, food was served, the other dogs were resting.

The greatest of the excitement was over.

My human looked different now. More at ease.

Perhaps for the first time in weeks there was nothing she had to organise.

Nothing left to prepare. No more documents to submit. No more appointment to get to.

We were on our way. That was all.

At some point I sat myself down by the window.

There was not much out there. Sky. Clouds. Great quantities of them.

Humans appear to take astonishing pleasure in looking at clouds from above.

I preferred to watch the cabin. The other dogs. My human. Then the clouds again.

Later the light changed.

The sun sank lower and coloured the sky above us.

My human looked out.

I do not know what she was thinking in that moment.

Perhaps she was thinking of Germany. Perhaps of Dubai. Perhaps of the fact that one part of her life now lay behind her and another was still waiting somewhere ahead of us.

Dogs presumably think less about borders of that kind.

For us the world does not change in chapters. It changes in smells, sounds, doors, routes and people.

And my world had changed very often over the past few days.

First our home. Then the drive. The hotel. The terminal. The other dogs. The aircraft.

Only one thing had not become different. She was still there.

More than six hours after our take-off, the aircraft began to descend again.

The humans grew busier. Things were stowed away. Glances went to the windows.

By now I knew this behaviour.

Apparently something was about to happen again.

Then the wheels touched the ground. We were in Dubai.

As the aircraft door opened, the world changed once more.

The air was warm. Not as it had been that morning in Munich.

New smells came in. Different sounds. Surroundings that had nothing to do with the place where this day had started.

My human stepped out of the aircraft.

And something about her suddenly became light.

The tension she had been carrying around for weeks was no longer there.

We had arrived. Not her in Dubai and me somewhere else. We.

From the aircraft we walked to the private terminal. Entry was dealt with quickly. Then we waited a while as an official vet checked the dogs' documents.

Naturally, at the end of this very long journey, there were papers once more.

By that point anything else would have surprised me.

Then that too was done.

Outside, a pet taxi was waiting. My human and I got in.

Another car. Another road. Something new again behind the next window.

This time the road led to our new home.

To this day I do not know what exactly “emigrating” means.

Humans use large words for things that feel much simpler to dogs.

For my human that day presumably meant a farewell and a beginning at once.

Germany lay behind her. Dubai lay ahead of her.

In between there had been a flight which, weeks earlier, she had not known whether we would ever be able to take together.

For me the same day consisted of a long series of new impressions.

A hotel room. Other dogs. A collar I had to take off for a moment. A bus. An aircraft. Sun on my coat. A long sleep above the clouds. And finally warm air on the other side of the world.

Almost everything was different from that morning.

But as we drove on to our new home at the end of that day, my human was still sitting beside me.

Perhaps that is the difference between humans and dogs.

Humans move to a new country and wonder when it will start to feel like home. Dogs have a simpler measure for that question.

I did not know where we were. I did not know what would happen the next morning. I only knew that she was there.

And for a beginning, that was enough.