Service Dog Relief Areas

Airports are required to have designated "service dog relief areas" clearly identified and when I travel (with or without Morey) I try to be aware of where these areas are located. Unfortunately, all of the ones I have found so far are outside the secured area. This means that you have to leave security, taking all your carry-on items with you, find the relief areas and let your dog use them, and then go through security again. As you can imagine, this process can take quite a long time and is only realistic if you have a very long layover.

If the trip is 6 hours or less (which most of mine are) I carefully monitor Morey's water intake before we leave and he doesn't have a problem holding it until he arrive at our destination. But on the way home from Nationals, we had a 4 hour layover in Chicago so I decided to find and let Morey use the animal relief area. It took 5 seconds for him to respond to the "hurry" command when we reached the tiny patch of grass and 40 minutes to go back through security. This is not a very user-friendly system and I had been tempted to let him use one of the decorative plants within the airport...it certainly would have saved a lot of time!

We recently took a trip back to Indiana and when we arrived Morey was very relieved to find the service animal relief area!