If Your Dog Needs To Pee When You Are At The Airport, What Do You Do?

Your Dog Can Pee At San Diego Airport. Freely.

Full disclosure here. I don’t have a dog. I love dogs. I love cats a bit more. But I love all animals. No discrimination. Though I always find it funny when I see dog owners sporting a warm bag of recently harvested poop dangling from their fingers as they walk my neighborhood. Good neighbors, proper dog-owning decorum and the right thing. But I chuckle anyway.
For the past 3 1/2 years the San Diego International Airport—Lindbergh Field—has been a mess. Parking lots have been torn out, traffic escalated and enough orange cones to make a driver’s ed or DMV motorcycle tester jealous. The promise of San Diego (SAN) Airport management has been a modern terminal, two level access to arrivals and departures and — even better (HA!)—more shopping and retail. In fact, in reviewing the entire project, the best I could figure at its onset is that all this mess was simply to provide travelers with more retail and dining options.
So I was surprised to discover that the newly expanded terminal was nearly open when I headed to my Delta departure gate in late July. Returning almost two weeks later, I discovered more of the new terminal had been unveiled. With nary time to hustle to baggage claim, I had to stop in amazement when I noticed a doggie bathroom: “Pet Relief”
Yes, a place where your dog can piss in the midst of the hustle, bustle and retail and dining madness at the yet to be officially opened, but certainly expanded terminal at San Diego International Airport.
The new doggie bathroom is complete with faux grass — so much for hte green movement — and a faux fire extinguisher. Oh, and for you new puppy owners, no worries, you get a changing table.
I’m not joking.
Some might wish to raise a bag of poo and question the funding source for such extravagant and flagrant use of funds. But since I didn’t wander to close inside the pee and poop ridden doggie den, I can only question that just if, just a few miles from SAN, somewhere in the legendary home of the San Diego Padres baseball team, PETCO Park, that baseball fans might be afforded the same opportunity. Where do you let your dog pee when you’re at the ballpark? Or, could it be, that even at PETCO park, dogs are not allowed. Is PETCO behind the new doggie doo-doo (hold your nose) pit stop at San Diego Airport?
Do share.
Here’s proof of the new improvement, nearly four years in the making, at San Diego International Airport.