Free Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family by Glenn Plaskin Page A

later, after we had become friends, Mario came over to my apartment one evening, bringing along as a present one of
     his signature dog pillows with a painted spaniel curled up on it. This was a gift for
me
, though Katie started ripping away the tissue paper as I took it from Mario’s hand.
    “This isn’t for you!” Mario lectured Katie, who scrammed away, as she was never comfortable around tall people (Mario was
     over six feet tall). But this didn’t stop Katie fromrequisitioning that pillow. When I wasn’t looking, she knocked it off the couch and I found her napping on the carpet with
     it under her head. When he said good-bye, Mario commented that Katie’s fur would make a nice glazed wall color.
    That night, I discovered that Katie was doing a little redecorating of her own. She had pushed the pillow into her kennel
     and arranged it carefully with her paws. She napped on it nearly every afternoon thereafter.
    Mario told me about a married couple who sold reasonably priced animal paintings out of a mobile truck. On his advice, I soon
     had hunting dogs, spaniels, and assorted other canines decorating my living room walls.
    “Now you’re English!” he joked.

    In addition to such meet-and-greets with local interview subjects, I was also determined to take Katie with me on flights
     to Los Angeles. In past years, traveling on business always left me feeling incredibly depressed and disconnected from my
     routine, friends, and, of course, my dog. So I came up with a plan to permanently rid myself of loneliness on the road—take
     Katie along with me. It was the perfect solution, much better than Prozac.
    But flying with a dog, even then, wasn’t the easiest thing to do. And I had no intention of “checking” Katie in the luggage
     compartment—a requirement of most airlines unless you had a very small dog that could fit into a kennel placed under the seat.
     Otherwise, a dog like Katie, weighing twenty-eight pounds, was relegated to the cargo hold—subjected to possible changes in
     temperature and air pressure that could be fatal to a dog, not to mention the terror of being trapped for six hours in a cage,
     alone in the dark!
    I had to avoid this. So I hatched an underhanded, thoughpragmatic, plan. I persuaded our vet to write a letter stating that Katie was a “hearing dog,” specially trained for the hearing-impaired
     and therefore allowed to travel freely through the airport and onto the plane.
    It worked. So after being escorted through security, Katie would march through the airport in her hat and coat, arrive at
     the gate, and jump onto a chair in the waiting area, quickly inundated with admiring new fans. Stressed-out travelers practically
     lined up to pet her. Kids wanted to feed her snacks. Several people wanted to take her picture. A Marine stopped by and said
     it did his heart good to see a dog.
    Sometimes she’d offer her right paw to “shake,” fascinated by the stream of visitors. Other times, she was too busy to bother,
     chewing on a bone, not interested in making new friends, as if to say, “
Dad,… I’m busy… I can’t talk to everybody!
”
    Then we would board the plane. We were usually put in the bulkhead at the front, with Katie snoozing on the floor, though
     if there was no passenger next to me, she snuggled on the seat, sipping water out of a cup or eating a few nuts or potato
     chips. Anytime the flight attendants passed by, I was careful not to answer unless I was looking right at their lips. To Katie’s
     credit, she never had an accident, not once.
    In retrospect, I should never have billed Katie as a hearing dog, out of respect for hard-working service animals who alert
     their owners to fire alarms, knocks on the door, telephones, kitchen timers, or even prowlers. But I wanted Katie with me
     and was desperate to protect her from that cargo hold.
    Once we got to the Beverly Hills Hotel (where I frequently stayed) and were taken into a bungalow behind the main