Meet the adopted rescue dog who now travels all around the world with his owner
IN two years Zorrito the mongrel has clocked up more air miles than many humans will in a lifetime.
Not bad for an abused rescue dog, who was adopted by his Lisburn-born owner Terrie Orr while she was staying in Buenos Aires. Since then, she’s refused to travel anywhere without him.
Zorrito — who is named after the Spanish word for ‘ little fox’ due to his red fur and fluffy tail — has accompanied the hairdresser from Argentina to Amsterdam, Madrid and Ireland.
But the process of flying a dog overseas isn’t simple and airlines can vary significantly in terms of both accommodation and the cost of bringing pets on board.
Like all other flying dogs, Zorrito has a canine passport and vaccinations against rabies. He first travelled on a plane last year when Terrie, who is in her forties, took him on holiday with her to Amsterdam with the airline KLM for only $200.
“They had a special area with heating for dogs — and the pilot actually took a photo of Zorrito and came up and showed me to tell me that he was okay,” said Terrie. But the long flight was quite an ordeal for the dog. “He was in a kennel for about 15 and a half hours and he was very nervous,” she said.
“And you can’t give them anything for it because it can affect their breathing on the flight. I thought he was going to be a little wreck but when I picked him up at the airport in Amsterdam he jumped around like a little puppy.”
A few weeks later, she flew with him to Madrid for €60. His last trip was in September, when the pair moved back from Argen- tina to Terrie’s home country of Northern Ireland via Dublin — which proved to be very expensive.
“I had to pay €1,000 because they had to use a cargo company,” she said.
Terrie is just one of many pet owners who insist on taking their pets with them on their travels — including X Factor judge Sharon Osbourne. This week the Daily Mail revealed that the celebrity forks out a whopping £230,000 a year to bring her two dogs in first class with her as “emotional support animals”.
“If I had Sharon Osborne’s money, Zorrito and I would be going to a lot more places,” said Terrie. In January, Terrie is flying back to Madrid with Zorrito and she is already planning to take him with her on a holiday with her friends.
For Terrie, the idea of leaving her beloved pooch behind is too painful to bear.
“I could never imagine life without him,” she said.