The story of a woman who left her golden doodle at a JetBlue ticket counter went viral this February. Denied a boarding pass at Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport because she didn’t have the proper paperwork, she tied the dog to the counter and walked to her gate.
The incident rippled through the airport. A single animal with nowhere to go pulls in ticket agents, airport police, and animal services, ties up a counter, and takes hours away from airline and ground teams.
In the end, the dog found a loving home. According to Lauren Anders Brown, CEO of PadsPass, the entire ordeal could have been avoided.
“There’s no single source of truth when it comes to pet travel compliance,” she said. “The rules depend on the airline, the destination, and the season — and they change all the time. You can’t reasonably expect a check-in agent to keep all of it straight. That’s the job we take off their plate.”
PadsPass, the technology company she founded with Nic Byron, stores a pet’s medical records in a single secure location, identifies the requirements for travel to a particular destination, and verifies that each document complies with them.
That includes vaccination records, health certificates, microchip details and import permits — the paperwork that is often spread across emails, veterinary clinics and government websites. The app currently supports travel between the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and the UK, as well as through major international hubs including Charles de Gaulle Airport and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
More information about the digital app and what it offers to the airline industry is available at padspass.com/airlines.
For pet owners, the app lets them see at a glance what their dog or cat needs. A row of green ticks, confirmed by an experienced veterinarian, indicates that the animal is cleared to fly before it leaves home. Rather than comparing documents against a fixed checklist, it checks each record against the destination’s latest entry requirements.
Anyone who has spent an extra hour at the check-in counter because a check-in agent couldn’t determine if a pet was eligible to fly will understand the appeal.
The benefits extend well beyond the pet owner: airlines see fewer denied boardings, fewer document disputes, and fewer animals stranded on their tab.
Check-in and gate staff get a pet that’s already cleared, rather than a rulebook to interpret on the spot. Customs and border officers receive health certificates and permits in a standard, tamper-proof format they can trust, which means faster clearance and fewer holds.
While a printed health certificate can be forged, misplaced, or left on a kitchen table, a verified digital record is far more difficult to tamper with. The Digital Pet Passport travels in the owner’s pocket, flagging treatments and vaccinations that are about to expire before they become a problem.
Since its September 2025 launch, PadsPass has built partnerships across aviation, veterinary care, and pet insurance — part of a bigger push to make verified pet records a standard part of how animals move.
“No family should lose their pet — or an airport team lose an afternoon — over a form that could have been checked in advance,” Brown said. “We built PadsPass so the airport is the easy part.”
She spent a decade and some 75 flights traveling with Paddington, her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, until a 2022 trip to the UK went wrong. Pads had a valid pet passport and were traveling a route they’d flown many times. Still, two errors undid them: a deworming dose given too close to arrival and the wrong active ingredient administered by her vet.
The problems surfaced on arrival. UK authorities took Pads away from her, with no release timeline and no point of contact. Brown later learned that her dog had been cleared for release for over an hour before anyone told her.
PadsPass was built so other families wouldn’t find themselves in a similar situation. Brown tested it early against one of the toughest standards she knew: The ARK at JFK. The award-winning, IATA- and IPATA-credentialed animal facility handles thousands of animals a year, from household pets to horses and exotic species. It gave Brown the confidence that PadsPass was ready.
“It’s a really strong way for pet owners to consolidate all of their pet’s information in one place,” said Elizabeth Schuette, president and CEO of Ark Import Export Center. “From a customer perspective, it’s excellent — and we support and recommend those types of applications.”
Brown’s longer-term goal is for verified records to become an industry standard — one that airlines, border officials and veterinarians can all rely on instead of multiple, and sometimes conflicting, sources. The more widely it is adopted, she believes, the fewer problems will reach the check-in counter.
“We can’t fix this alone,” she said. “We’re looking for partners across the industry — airlines, airports, vets — who want pet travel to just work.”
