We’ve made it to Deutschland, complete with pooches and about 400 pounds of luggage.

We left Atlanta Saturday after a wild, out-straight week of packing, movers, a round trip drive to Florida, three or four visits to a storage unit, and two nights in our temporary housing.

Sad to leave, we were excited for our new adventure — if we could only get the dogs checked into their flight, through TSA, and across the ocean … ALIVE. This was my (Allison’s) primary fear and biggest concern through the entire moving process — how to get my furry babies over the Atlantic without suffering some sort of canine version of a nervous breakdown. Our vet, and Jeff’s dear friend, Meg refused to provide anti-anxiety meds, and for good reason. But worry not, I took mine with enthusiasm (chased by a cabernet-merlot blend).

Helping to calm our nerves, Jeff buddied up with our flight’s First Officer prior to boarding. He made it a point to check on our pooches during his walk-around (what a nice German and great first impression!) and then point out the location of our boxed-up children on the ramp near the gate. I spent about an hour with my new Swedish friend Emelia, who was shipping her felines, watching the three “live-animal” crates with the same attention and horror that  we might watch a thriller. The process of getting them settled onto their cargo pallet (yes, I said cargo pallet) went something like this…

The ramp worker/animal handler followed a clear checklist and process. He:

–very gracefully placed Breezy and Kaya onto their pallet and roped their crates together.

–positioned the smaller cat crate behind the dogs — and applied more rope.

–shook them vigorously (I guess he was testing the strength of his knots, but at the time, I assumed he was making an obvious attempt to wake the dogs from a black out, or the early-stages of a coma …were they dead already?)

–decided, this was not the best crate architecture.

–untied crates and removed dogs and cats from pallet.

–repositioned Breezy and Kaya.

–put cats ON TOP of dog crates.

–repeated roping.

-repeated vigorous shaking.

–looked at his first pet packing job with satisfaction and moved them to the boarding area.

Here are the doggies on the ramp, behind the white pick-up truck. You can see the ramp worker securing the cats into their first position.

Meanwhile, I asked the gate agent to have someone check their water bowls (obviously, the water didn’t stand a chance with all that shaking). They did. Thanks, Lufthansa.

Eight hours later — complete with a delicious dinner, a four hour nap, half a movie, and one more hour of stressing — we landed in Frankfurt. The rest was literally a breeze. We picked up the dogs from their special baggage belt, met with our driver Manfred, passed through customs with hardly a glance at our doggy paperwork by German officials, and headed to Cologne … at the slow speed of up to 190 km/hour (that is 117.8 mph, folks) on the famous autobahn.

We arrived at our second temporary home, the Pullman, by noon on Sunday. Greeted by happy faces and a clean suite, we began the settling process. It took the dogs no time to relax.

Needless to say, we began our adventure with a nap.

—Allison