Three Dog Nights

How can you begin a new life in another country without your “family” … even if they’ve got four legs and fur?

“If they can’t come with us, we’re not going,” my partner and I agreed: If our three Miniature Schnauzers — our children, now that our biological one was grown — couldn’t travel with us and be allowed entry into the EU, we wouldn’t follow our hearts and minds to Portugal and Spain … much as we were distraught and disillusioned with what has been happening in the United States.

That meant not only would we expect our dogs to fly in the cabin with us (not the cargo hold!) for all three flights from Green Bay, Wisconsin, to Madrid, Spain … but it also presumed that they would be allowed to pass through Immigration in Spain and then into Portugal without any beastly requirements.

Bringing our furry family members with us would become the most complex and frustrating part of making a new home on the other side of the big pond.

The “kids,” as we refer to them, had lived with us in Florida, Wisconsin, and Virginia. But whenever we traveled to our vacation bolt in southern Spain, we’d leave them at home with carefully vetted pet-sitters.

Now, our future depended on them being there with us.

Fortunately, due to our own personal maladies, the dogs qualified as “service” animals with the…