Here's a great article that I thought I would pass on... Happy New Year! –Kim

Airline Workers Give Grounded Pooch a Home for the Holidays

By Renee Nadeau Algarin
December 24, 2011

Continental Airlines customer service reps have opened their homes in the spirit of this season of giving to a little dog that flew cross-county with his owner only to be barred from a flight to Spain.

Jane Bossi of Wakefield, a 28-year employee, said she was boarding customers on a Madrid-bound flight Sunday as a colleague tended to a Lake Tahoe woman and her 4-month-old puppy, Whopper.

The woman paid to have the pup fly under her seat from San Francisco to Boston, but she hadn't secured a health certificate from a vet to fly the pup out of the country. Hopes of placing the pup in a pet hotel went bust since he is too young to have had all his shots.

That's when Bossi opened her home to the pooch, offering to care for Whopper until his tearful owner returned from her trip to visit family in Spain.

"You just have to reach out and follow your heart and do something nice. She was out of answers. She did not know what else to do," Bossi said.

Bossi has emailed photos of the brindle Shar Pei-Boxer mix to his owner daily.

"I'm in love with him now because he's so beautiful," Bossi said.

Whopper will not be able to tag along on a surprise trip to New Hampshire to visit Bossi's mother, but luckily Bossi's co-workers have hearts as big as hers.

"The mother in all of us just took over," said LaDonna Evans-Ampadu, a fellow customer service rep and longtime foster parent who will pick up Whopper at the airport today to bring him to her Worcester home for the holiday. She plans to use the experience to teach her two daughters about caring for a dog before they get one next year.

Bossi said she has gotten more out of the experience than she imagined.

"This puppy was almost given to me as a gift," she said. "You do things sometimes and you get more back than you ever felt you deserved."

Source: http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2011_1224airline_workers_give_grounded_pooch_a_home_for_the_holidays
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