Tucker arrives in China!

On Sunday, August 26th, Kelly flew from Chicago to Beijing with Tucker.  He was crated in his brand new dog carrier with a little food, water, a pad and his favorite stuffed toy puppy.  They landed in Beijing around 2:00 pm (our time).  Kelly went through a program called "pet safe" and was told that they could check on Tucker during flight and that when they landed Kelly could see Tucker before he was taken to quarantine (where he was to be held for 7 days).  Kelly was informed mid flight that there was no possible way to check on Tucker during the flight but he did see them taking Tucker off the plane from the cargo compartment once they had landed.  Kelly then proceeded to baggage claim by the temporary quarantine to find Tucker.  They told Kelly that Tucker wasn't there.  He had to go to lost and found to find out what they did with him.  He finally, with the help of our awesome driver, Mr. Lou, found out that they had taken him to Air China's cargo hold.  This was a bit of a ways away.  They went to the cargo office and from there go to 3 different places to get paper work and stamps, blah blah blah.  After paying a ridiculous amount of money they let Kelly go back and check on the poor boy (he had been in a crate for over 20 hours by this time!).  He was being held in a cargo hold with one other dog in a crate.  Kelly let him out in this dingy cargo hold and petted him and let him do his business in their building (thats what they get for being ridiculous).  He stayed with him for an hour but they would not release him without more paper work and stamps and blah, blah, blah......Tucker chewed him out royally for making him go back in that crate.  It was hard for Kelly to put him in and walk away but there was nothing he could do (and he had been awake for over 30+ hours at this point).  Kelly finally arrived home around 8:00pm and the girls could see the anguish on his face.  They were very upset.  The only upside was the goodies that Grandma Wilson and Ella's friend Kendall sent back with him, and the Garrett's Carmel corn he bought in Chicago.  Thank God for good ole US snacks!  (P.S. thank you momma for the chocolate...another couple of weeks may go by where I don't feel like I want to punch someone in the face because of you!) 
 The next morning Kelly and myself set out to break Tucker out of that hell hole.  Nobody checks on the dogs in there so we went back to Air China cargo and had to go through the same process as the night before (3 different buildings, 3 different papers and stamps etc. etc.  a bunch more money) just to get in and see him, feed him, let him out for a moment.  We then had to pay some young man an ungodly amount of money to walk us through the process of getting our dog out of cargo.  We started the day at 9:00am and after yelling at people (on Kelly's part) and literally sobbing (on my part) we were able to get our hands on Tucker at 4:30pm.  There was a crowd of about 20 Chinese men watching our reunion with our sweet boy.  He chewed us out for a little bit and I ran him around on his leash and let him do his business on anything he wanted to!!  Take that!!  We then piled him in our car along with the man from quarantine and went to a few more places for papers and stamps and more money.......we finally arrived at quarantine where the man got out of our car and took Tucker out of our crate and walked away with him.........no good byes, no wet sloppy kisses, nothing!!  I can only pray that quarantine is a lot better than what he was in.  They said it is temperature controlled and that they walk., feed and water him everyday.  I am going to have to turn a blind eye and just suck it up until Monday morning when I will be breaking down the door of that darn place to retrieve my son.  Thank goodness Grandma Wilson fattened him up while he was there.  He weighed in at 109lbs.
My thought on this.......and there are many......is, what on earth do they do with all of that paper work??  I know sometimes we feel like they are overzealous in the US on things but I have never in my life seen a bigger racket! 

That is Tuckers crate (big square box) coming off the plane.

The cargo hold where he spent over 24 hours in solitary confinement!



A stressed, but alive and well Tucker Lee DeSmet.