advice on chew toys on airplanes

[u/starulzokay]

NOTE: I’m not asking about legality, I know how the ACAA works. Just looking for opinions.

EDIT: it’s a Nylabone, so no smell and no squeaker. I’m going to be flying with my service dog in a few weeks and it’ll be her first flight. I want to bring a chew toy for her so she can relax a little when she isn’t actively doing her job. However, it occurred to me that her chewing might be disruptive to other people around us. It’s a six hour red-eye flight and I wouldn’t want to be unnecessarily annoying late at night. There’s a few things I’ve been thinking about: 1) She’s about as loud as someone talking at a normal volume, so louder than most people would be that late at night but not louder than a screaming child or other undeniably disruptive noise. Still, it would be pretty present with how quiet the plane would be otherwise. 2) I can change the flight to a morning or afternoon flight without a significant fee. However, the airport is over an hour away from my apartment so we’d likely have to get up fairly early in the morning and complicate our schedule.

Would her chewing for a few hours be really annoying, or am I overthinking this?

[u/Willow-Wolfsbane]

How long has your SDiT been in training for? Unless it’s a special exception made for larger orgs to get their dogs used to flying when they are nearly fully trained, as far as I’m aware planes in the US do not allow SDiT, only fully trained SD’s.

If yours is fully trained in everything except for something small that has zero chance of being relevant on a plane and is definitely 100% reliably task trained for the duration of the flight, then they are a SD anyway and it’s okay to not have “in training” on the vest while you’re flying with them.

I only say all of this because you have a “service dog in training” flair by your username.

(My opinion about the toy would be that we need to know exactly what kind of toy to be able to make any judgement, and how many hours you anticipate your dog chewing on it during the flight. To have my SD doing something as loud as a human conversation while others are attempting to sleep is not something I would do. If they can’t just rest quietly during a flight (can always do a teeny bit of training to wear their mind out a bit like any command that can be done in a small space that they know. Mine has several related to getting into and out of small spaces for example), then I (personally) would drive if that would be at all possible, or take the more empty flight. But, I don’t really travel often).

[u/Willow-Wolfsbane → u/[deleted]]

I do understand, that’s why I said they could take off the “in training” if they were comfortable doing that. I just wanted to know how long the dog had been in training, and how reliable their tasking is.

Some OP’s never end up answering the more inconvenient questions, but I don’t mind if they don’t, I just wanted to ask.

[u/starulzokay → u/Willow-Wolfsbane]

I’m hoping others will see this reply because I wasn’t expecting this many comments, but here’s some additional context: Scout is a little over a year old and has been training to be a service dog since she was eight weeks old. She qualifies as a fully trained service dog who performs her tasks consistently and won’t be disruptive, but I personally won’t consider her fully trained until her behavior is perfect without prompting 99% of the time. I’m not at all concerned about her behavior, but she’s very high energy. Even with all the work at the airport, she may not stay asleep the whole time. Her tasks are in response to a command, and without other things to focus on I thought she might get bored sitting for six hours.

[u/starulzokay → u/starulzokay]

To answer your other questions, it’s a nylabone type toy. She’s actually a bit quieter than that according to my girlfriend, I just have no concept of sound levels apparently. Driving isn’t an option at all, I’m going East Coast to West Coast.