After 6 long months of being apart from our Meeka dog, she finally arrived in China, and the best part was that the girls had no idea she was coming!
The girls have not quite been the same since we had to leave Meeka behind in the US last November as we headed off to China. More recently, however, they have talked about her more and more, wanting to know if we would ever be able to get her here. Little did they know, that I was planning her arrival for months, and months is what it took. Her travel alone took 7 days to get from Michigan to Guangzhou!
This past Saturday, it finally all worked out. The girls and I were watching a Netflix show about the world's best dogs, and we, of course, talked about Meeka throughout. Then we heard some whimpering and scratching outside the front door and thought it sounded like a dog. The girls ran to the door and found their Meeka waiting for them on the other side! Their reactions are absolutely priceless. Taelyn even lost her voice for several days afterward after screaming so much.
About 30 minutes prior to this moment, I finally got the notice from the pet relocation company that Meeka had arrived in Guangzhou. I left the apartment to "run some errands" and greeted our pup in the back of a van that came from the airport. I have never seen Meeka bark so much as when she saw me. Meeka never barks, but she was so excited to be with her people again. My video is terrible as I was trying to hold the camera and see Meeka, but you can get the idea of how excited she was.
The whole reunion took months of planning and working with a pet relocation company on both the China and US ends of the operation along with lots of paperwork, vaccinations, and health check-ups. Grandma and Grandpa Walker were integral in getting about 99% of it all done and in getting Meeka across the world. One week before she arrived in Guangzhou, they drove her to Chicago where she sat in cargo for an entire day before flying to Frankfurt. There, she stayed another full day before flying to Shanghai. Again, she spent another full day at the airport just to get cleared into China where the pet relocation company picked her up. She had to spend a couple of days in a kennel in Shanghai while the company got her approval to fly to Guangzhou, and she finally boarded that final flight Saturday morning. This dog has been to more countries in the past six months than most people in the world this year!
Unfortunately, Justin had an event going on when Meeka actually got to our apartment, but he had another special greeting from her when he got home. It is so wonderful to finally be together as one full family now.
