Joschka, the brown-spotted Dalmatian, is welcome on planes, where, during more than 25 international flights, he’s proven he can sit quietly, put off bathroom breaks and mind his own business better than some of the human passengers. The psychiatric service dog has been trained to do all that and more so he can travel with Till-Mathias Jürgens, whose own flights are much smoother now that Joschka comes along.
Joschka is trained to European travel standards, something required of European psychiatric service dogs if they want to fly from place to place. That can be a nasty surprise for Americans flying from the U.S. to a final destination in Europe with a psychiatric service dog. As long as they meet the limited service animal requirements under the American Air Carrier Act, U.S. service dogs can fly in the airplane’s cabin from the U.S. into Europe — but the first stop is as far as they can go in the cabin. If, for example, the plane has a layover en route to Italy, the dog’s not cabin-approved for that second leg. Most airlines require European-standards certification.