Air Canada loses dog in California, blames interest on U.S. government shutdown

Air Canada appears to have heaped awkward on top of awkward this week after losing a Canada-bound dog at a California airport and suggesting, presumably by accident, that the interest paid to the case has been caused by the U.S. government shutdown.

A CBS News affiliate in Sacramento reported late Thursday about a baggage handling snafu that ended with a 2-year-old Italian greyhound getting free from its cage and running away.

According to the station, San Francisco’s Jutta Kulic promised her dying friend that she would find a home for her dog, Larry.

That home happened to be in Canada and, earlier this week, Kulic delivered Larry in a crate to Air Canada to be boarded on a Canada-bound flight, warning the company not to let the greyhound out of the cage unless they were in an enclosed space.

Because greyhounds like to run, and are fast, and crates are scary. Long story short, the flight was delayed and Larry was let out of the cage by an employee. Yup, Larry ran away.

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The company told Kulic, Kulic told a television station, and the station contacted an Air Canada spokesperson for comment.

Here is the response, apparently sent by mistake and actually intended for a colleague:

Come on, Air Canada. We are Canadian, we are supposed to be humble and even tempered and not prone to fits of schadenfreude. Americans don’t take shots at us over the shattered state of our government (unless it involves Rob Ford, they really seem to enjoy that one).

And another thing. The attention paid to that lost dog has nothing to do with a government shutdown. We’re the media. We are almost always interested in stories about lost dogs.

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