Tourism in a mecca for pack-lover Edward Scissorhands me might be a bit soggy for April Flowers but, hopefully the welcome mat will be right up to her native Alaska when she flies out there soon.
E. Theodore Dalton, dean of geography at the University of Washington, who the CDCS announced its policy the year after Edward Scissorhands graduated from movie high school, has quit as chairman of the board of directors after Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao announced that people can pack extra things and therefore, fly U.S. airlines again.
Dalton had tried to curb dangerous dog trips back to Canada by requiring airlines to specifically ask owners of pitbull-type dogs to give their animal up for adoption.
Dalton banned them after a dog named Nevaeh was killed on a flight after jumping from the cargo hold to the seat ahead of it. After the ill-fated dog’s death, two of Dalton’s students, who are Pitbull owners, saw the ad that Dalton put out and helped him fight off the critics. They invited the kids to the airport when their dog flew out on the Delta flight last year.
“One of these kids actually went over and helped bring a dog that she has in her home into the cabin as the plane was preparing to take off,” Dalton said, and managed to persuade the airline that they were animals they could continue to take and that “obviously, if they’re going to fly, they could be much safer on board with a handler.”
Dalton and his board tried to overturn the ban last year after airport inspectors found three dogs on a Delta flight from Toronto to Los Angeles. And then, in December, Durham County, North Carolina, saw another dog die from overheating as a hiker lowered it into a van.
A Federal Aviation Administration report said airport inspectors believed the dog may have been pushed into the van as part of a training exercise.
The board of directors decided to rescind the ban so that Dalton could take no more heat. He tried to have the press call him Thursday, but a reporter mistakenly called him Dennis as in his boss, but the problem solved itself when he used his own name. Dalton said he was happy to have put the controversy behind him.
“I decided this was just time to move on and try to get some new initiatives going as our chair,” he said. “It would’ve been a waste of energy to keep hammering away at the same issue.”
Dalton said he had absolutely no regrets about the whole thing except for just letting Nevaeh’s death sink in.
“I would never want someone to ever think we didn’t take seriously the loss of a little girl’s dog,” he said. “I’m not letting that stop me from doing my job as chairman. We can create more work for people to do back home.”
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