Flying with Dogs

I fly with my dogs regularly. I have two:

• A now senior ~40 lbs street stray mutt who a Wisdom DNA test tells me is 25% Siberian Husky, 37.5% an indistinct mix of herding, Asian, and hound breeds, and then equal parts GSD, Chow, and American Staffordshire Terrier - all ears! 
• A ~60 lbs. Labrador, both my senior boy (who passed last year) and my puppy (who's now almost a year and a half). In fact, the puppy flew home from the breeder (Santa Maria) in the back of a Mooney (crated).

Physical Logistics

They've ridden in the back seat (Piper Arrow, Mooney M20E) but it's not the most comfortable for longer trips. On other trips, I’ve removed the rear seats from the 1972 Arrow II entirely (easy; takes seconds, without tools). 

In the M20F I took out the rear seat backs.

If I’m traveling on a longer cross-country, I will always look to take a plane that has similar rear seat capabilities. I make a nest for them; a 72"x72" puppy pad goes down first to protect the interior, then a 42" crate bed (the widest that will fit in the back seat of the Mooney, laid transversely). They love it. Dogs I don't know (Pilots n Paws rescues) fly in a soft sided crate that can be erected in the plane; for the M20F, the largest one that will fit (rear seat backs removed) is a 42-inch sof-krate n2, which measures 42"L x 28"W x 31"H. (On one occasion, when I was transporting two big dogs who couldn’t crate together, I had one in a smaller Precision Pet Soft Side Pet Crate 3000 and, with the puppy pad down, hooked the other dog via a chain (from Home Depot, nothing fancy) and quick-release connector, to the luggage tie-down loops in the cargo area.)

(When I haven't taken the crate out, my pups will fly in it, too, without complaint.)

The longest legs we've done have been ~5 hours nonstop. Make sure your pup(s) go to the bathroom (including pooping!) immediately before the flight, and keep them on their regular schedule! (Once, I walked my pups around midnight before a ~7 am departure; off their regular schedule, neither one had to “go” the next morning ... One decided she had to at 11,000' directly over McCarran! Fortunately I was traveling with a battery powered Bissell shampooer.)

One thing I need to get is a non-slip furniture moving blanket to protect the wing - something like this maybe?

Also, in the interest of being a good renter, I carry a handheld Dyson Car + Boat vacuum with me, and a rubber brush to really get dog hair out of the carpet (if any gets into the carpet in the first place; with the nest built up, it’s pretty rare there’s much of a clean-up). I also brush them with a Kong Zoom Groom regularly, and especially before a trip.

Noise

Some people swear by Mutt Muffs, but in my experience (echoed by a lot of other folks, including some with sound engineering expertise) they don't do much of anything; in any case, my critters hate them and tear them off.

I’ve used Decibel X:db, an iPhone app, to measure decibels in the Mooney at cruise and it’s actually quieter than my soft-top Jeep Wrangler (a 1995 “YJ” model I’ve owned since new; my dogs have ridden in it their whole lives) on the freeway. 

My mutt (with the Radar O’Reilly hearing) has been flying with me for >5 years and doesn't seem impacted at all (she can still hear a dog on the sidewalk 3 stories down and a hundred yards away, around a corner, over my home theater), and all my dogs have leapt enthusiastically onto the wing to go flying, which they absolutely would not do if the sound levels were painful or the experience uncomfortable (cf. the mad scramble when I take out the vacuum cleaner).