My wife and I are returning to our home in Vermont and need some advice on the best way of transporting our poodle by air. Ron & Mare' Mogavero, Birchington-on-Sea, Kent

Sunday Times travel expert, Richard Green, responds: Exiting the arrivals hall clutching a small dog may look easy and glamorous for Paris Hilton and Britney Spears but in fact it's only possible to take a dog into the cabin across the Atlantic on Air France, and then it's only vaguely practical if you are travelling in First Class ­ where there is room for the dog and its container.

For the rest of us, transporting a dog involves grappling with a minefield of rules and regulations, and having your pet travel in the hold. Or you do the sensible thing and talk to an established pet travel agency, like Air Pets (0800 371554), which dispatches over 100 pets a month. For an airport-to-airport service, where the box is provided, expect to pay about £600-800 for a Toy Poodle from London to Boston, or up to £1,500 for a Standard Poodle. Or try Sky Dogs (01629 734 000)

Pets used to be allowed as excess baggage, which meant that you said your goodbyes at check-in, then were reunited at the other end at arrivals. Now however, airlines say that pets must travel as cargo. Either way, they travel in a livestock section of the hold, which is heated and pressurised to the same conditions as the passenger cabin.

So far so good, but the process gets dangerous for the animals, not so much when they are in the air, but when they are being transported from one place to another on the ground. If it's too hot or too cold at the arrival airport, pets can die ­ 60 of them in the last two years on America's airlines for exmaple.

Things are improving though. Continental has invested in pet friendly heated (or cooled) warehouses at its hub airports, and the other American carriers won't transport pets to the States in high summer or mid winter, with ad-hoc embargoes coming into effect with the arrival of extreme weather in between.

Times recommends

• 10 of Rough Guides' best images
• How to do Florence for free
• The UK and Ireland's 25 best Christmas events