Bone Voyage!

As another indication of the bounty of our society, I direct your attention to Pet Airways:

We always knew Zoe, our Jack Russell Terrier, was smart, but it wasn't until a couple years ago that we realized she's also a brilliant entrepreneur. After all, it was Zoe who gave us the idea for Pet Airways.

With Zoe as part of our family, planning vacations was always a little more complicated. Visiting out-of-state friends or relatives required sophisticated logistics. Weekend getaways always had to be close to home.

It wasn't Zoe's fault of course. It was the airlines'. There was simply no safe way for Zoe to comfortably fly with us. She's not a big dog. Just a little one. But a little too big to fit under the seat.

Of course, there's one thing Zoe is certainly not, and that's cargo. As we're fond of telling our neighbor Janet, her boxer Samson isn't Samsonite, and she agreed. In fact, we met lots of neighbors, friends and even complete strangers who felt exactly the same way.

So we got to thinking. Maybe Zoe was trying to tell us something. Maybe there was a travel solution that would suit her perfectly, and everyone else out there too. Instead of trying to convince the human airlines to treat pets better, why not start up an airline just for pets? And Pet Airways was born.

Whenever we tell people about Pet Airways, the response is so overwhelmingly positive, we're still amazed we were the first to make it happen. You see, on Pet Airways, your pets aren't packages, they're Pawsengers.™ And every step of the journey, we'll take care of them as if they were our own. While Zoe passed on in June 2010, she will forever be the wind beneath our wings. Now from heaven, she'll have the best view of all our flying pawsengers.

Bone voyage!

Dan and Alysa

It’s a for-real company, publicly traded under the ticker symbol PAWS.

The airline launched its first weekly flight on July 14, 2009 and serves nine US cities—New York City, Baltimore/Washington, D.C., Chicago, Omaha, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Phoenix Denver and Los Angeles—for a fee of about $150 minimum. The airline plans to expand to serving 25 cities by late 2011.

I may have to do some due diligence on this one. I have seen how much people pamper their pets.