A Toronto woman says a dog she rescued from the Dominican Republic was traumatized after being left in a corner of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport with luggage for about 9 hours.
Jenna Butts had just spent three months in Puerto Plata, where she found and fell in love with a stray dog. She decided to bring the animal back to Canada and find him a good home.
Butts, along with a rescue named Winston and her own dog, arrived at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. Around 2 a.m., her dog came out, but Winston did not.
“(I) talked to some of the baggage people while they were there and I said, ‘I’m still waiting for a dog.’ They told me there was nothing else there,” she said.
At around 3am, she was advised by a customs agent to go home and call the airline later as no other staff were around.
“I was very angry and didn’t understand how no one could be at the airport to help me find my dog,” she said. “It’s a living thing.”
Butts spent the rest of the morning trying to contact Air Transat to find out if Winston had even made it to Toronto or if he was still in Puerto Plata.
About 9 p.m. later, customs officials at Pearson Airport spotted the crate.
“He was found in the corner with lost bags,” Butts said.
A customs agent had removed Winston from his crate to give him water, Butts said, but the animal was still covered in urine by the time he got to him.
“He’s very traumatized,” she said. “I definitely won’t be traveling with dogs for a while.”
Butts said she received an email from GTA dnata, Pearson Airport’s air transit service provider, apologizing for the incident and offering her a gift card as compensation.
“While there were reasons for the service outage that left you wondering where your precious pet is, we can only assure you that we will take the necessary steps to ensure that no other pet owner is left in the similar situation,” CEO Antonio Alvarez wrote. “You entrusted them with your precious cargo and unfortunately we let you down.”
“As a dog owner, I can fully appreciate the anguish our failure has caused you and we would like to offer you a small token of compensation in the form of a gift card that you can use as you see fit.”
Butts said she has yet to hear directly from Air Transat. Reached for comment, the airline told CTV News Toronto that it has requested a full investigation into the incident.
“We are deeply sorry that our client had to go through this stressful situation. We will contact them directly to provide full details and offer compensation. “
Butts said he is not interested in compensation. What she wants the airline to do is create a better policy when it comes to handling live animals on their planes.
“I’m still very shaken,” she said. “It’s hard for me to get my words together. There has to be a procedure, better policies.”
“I feel like (Air Transat) could have handled the situation in a much better way and, you know, with a little more empathy, because it seemed like nobody really cared.”
She said Winston was supposed to be taken to his new home the day he landed, but that was delayed by a day because of the traumatic experience.
In the past few weeks, passengers flying through Pearson Airport have filed complaints about lost luggage and delayed or canceled flights. Pictures show thousands of bags sitting idle in the baggage claim area, waiting for their owners to come and claim them.
One man told CP24 he arrived in Toronto 16 days ago and is still waiting for his lost luggage.
The Toronto Airport Authority cited staff shortages, flight delays and cancellations and temporary mechanical malfunctions as some of the reasons for the “baggage challenges.”
With files from CTV News Toronto’s Jessica Smith and Carol Charles
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