Delivery
Getting Your Puppy Home
The three ways a puppy can reach you, how long each takes and what it runs to, and the one method I rule out whatever the price.
Delivery happens in one of three shapes: you drive out and collect, a driver brings the puppy to your door the whole way by road, or a flight nanny carries it to you in the aircraft cabin. I handle delivery to all fifty states. The method you will never be offered is the cargo hold, no matter the distance, no matter the fee, no matter what an airline tells you it allows.
Your three ways home
Come and collect
I drive up to two hours out of Sedona to meet buyers for nothing, which takes in Flagstaff, Prescott and the bulk of the Phoenix metro. Most buyers just drive to the house, spend time with the litter and leave the same afternoon with their puppy.
Budget about half an hour at the house, most of it walking through the health record and clearing up whatever has occurred to you since you first wrote. You will meet the dam. Within a day’s drive this beats the other two options comfortably, for the simple reason that you get to see where the puppy has spent its whole life.
Driven by road
Carried the entire way in a climate-controlled vehicle, stopped at intervals to walk, feed and check the dog. No depot, no holding pen, no swap from one carrier to another: one person stays with the puppy from Sedona to the end of your driveway.
Door to door this runs from same-day inside roughly 400 miles out to three or four days at the opposite coast. You get told when it sets off and roughly when it will reach you, and the dog is put into your hands in person.
Flight nanny in the cabin
A courier books a seat, keeps the puppy in the cabin beside them for the whole flight, and passes it to you at arrivals. End to end it is a single day against the road’s three or four, which past about 2,000 miles makes it both quicker and kinder on the dog.
This is what I normally use for the Northeast, for Florida, and for anywhere served by a big hub. For Alaska and Hawaii it is the only way in.
A rough guide by distance
| Distance from Sedona | By road | What most people pick |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 400 miles | Same day | Collect, or meet partway |
| 400 to 900 miles | 1 day | Road |
| 900 to 1,600 miles | 2 days | Road |
| 1,600 to 2,200 miles | 2 to 3 days | Could go either way, ask me |
| Beyond 2,200 miles | 3 to 4 days | Flight nanny, one day |
| Alaska and Hawaii | Does not apply | Flight nanny, nothing else |
Tell me your town and the figure comes back to you.
Raise Hawaii with me early. The state runs a strict rabies quarantine and a documented import process that needs months of groundwork. I will walk you through it straight before you commit a cent, because it is nothing like a quick purchase and a fair few people step back once they grasp what it actually involves.
Heat sets more travel dates than distance ever does
A thickset, flat-faced puppy has little margin in the heat, and humidity bites harder than the thermometer does, because panting only sheds heat when the air around the dog can still soak up the moisture. None of that is small print. It is why my calendar is shaped the way it is.
Across May to September anything routed through the southern corridor moves after dark. Put a heat advisory on the road and I shift the date rather than push through it, and I will tell you plainly that heat is the reason. Two extra days beats a puppy arriving in distress every single time.
Cold barely registers by comparison. The dog rides warm in a heated vehicle and shrugs off a Minnesota January. What derails a winter run is a closed road, not the temperature on it.
The reason it is never cargo
A cargo hold puts a dog alone in a crate, loaded by hands that never met it, in a space where temperature and pressure drift, and nobody near enough to help if the dog gets into trouble. Airlines do move animals that way and some are careful about it. I am not willing to gamble on which kind turns up on the day.
Every option on this page keeps the puppy beside a human for the whole trip. That is the entire reason, and it does not bend for distance or for money.
This page is the how. The sales policy covers the rest: what happens when a delivery has to be moved, and what happens if something is wrong when the dog reaches you.
Tell me where you are
One reply back: the way that fits your distance, how long it takes, and what it costs, all before a dollar moves.