An extremely bizarre plane trip, dogs and vomit

I haven't traveled by air a great deal in my life, mainly because I don't like to fly. But my trip home from San Antonio qualifies as a bizarre airline experience. I couldn't get my seat assignment for some reason. When I finally managed to get an assigned seat 10 minutes before takeoff, the airline employee asked if I was allergic to dogs. I told her I love dogs. She said "good, because you're sitting beside a service dog." I figured it was a dog assisting someone with vision loss. I was wrong. When I got to my seat, I saw that the window seat was taken up by a government agent-looking man with a huge dog. The aisle seat was taken up by another government agent-looking man with yet another dog. My seat was right in the middle of the two men and their dogs. I asked them what the dogs were trained to do. They told me they sniff for things. I asked them what kind of things. They said, well, "bombs." They two men were extremely nice and told me about their 12 weeks of training in San Antonio. The dogs loved me, as you can see from the picture. At one point each one had their head propped up on my knee. By the end of the flight I was covered in dog hair, but I had a good time.

The dogs exited the plane on a layover in Dallas. At that point, I met up with Hunter Bretzius, the editor of The Gaston Gazette and a good friend. We were on the same plane as we had attended the same editors' conference. She also had a bizarre flight, but not in a good way. She told me the woman sitting beside her vomited everywhere. I can't imagine having to sit in such cramped quarters with vomit all around you. Hunter said the woman was chatty early on, started slowly reaching for the barf bag, and then emptied the contents of her stomach to the horror of all the other passengers. Hunter's a trooper and a pretty good sport. We compared our different but strange flying experiences. Unfortunately, after our layover Hunter had to go back to same seat. I believe they got it cleaned up. I'm going to write a full column on this flying experience, but I'm pretty wiped out at the moment. I have to kick my jet lag first. But it's great to be back in Shelby.