Diana,
I would suggest that your daughter be more insistent, without being
unpleasant of course, about getting her dog's health certificate from the
vet clinic on base. Tell her to remind them of what is going on in the
world, and that she needs their help in this unprecedented situation, and
they need to make an exception here. Persistence often does pay off; like
the "squeaky wheel" theory. If she were to go in first thing Monday AM,
and keep going back every few hours or as often as she has time to, she
can make it "more pleasant" for them to give in than to keep seeing her
back in their faces and turning her away.
I used to travel a lot on business (alone), and occasionally I wound up in
hairy situations, where some "authority" or other decided to exercise
their "power" over a lone American women. For example, I was once in New
Delhi, India, scheduled on an early flight home the next morning after a
two-week stay there. I had laryngitis from the dust and car exhaust in
the air (the "dust" was mostly from all the cow dung in the streets), and
I couldn't wait to get out of there. The power went out in my hotel
during the night, so I didn't get my 4 am wake-up call. When I did wake
up, I scrambled out of there as fast as I could, and got to the airport
just after the 45-minute cut-off for getting through customs. There were
no other passengers anywhere in sight, and I had plenty of time to get
to the plane, but I had three armed guards telling me, "I'm sorry" and
shaking their heads. But I didn't retreat, I just kept talking, even
though they didn't understand English, I didn't speak Indian, and I could
barely talk anyway from the laryngitis. They finally got tired of me, let
me through, and I got on that plane!
Good luck to your daughter!
Nancy and critters
[Posted in FML issue 3542]
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