Dog goes through X-ray at airport, photo shows. ‘Not the first Chihuahua we’ve seen’

The airport security officer manning the X-ray machine spotted something unusual in a traveler’s backpack, officials said.

A captured image shared to Twitter shows a pet stuffed inside the bag at Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wisconsin.

“A dog was accidentally sent through the X-ray (at the Madison airport) this week,” TSA Great Lakes said in a Dec. 6 tweet.

Pets are supposed to be removed from bags at airport security checkpoints, officials said, and only their empty carriers and belongings should be screened by the X-ray.

But that doesn’t mean something like this hasn’t happened before.

“Surprisingly, it’s not the first Chihuahua we’ve seen in a bag,” TSA Southeast Regional Spokesperson Mark Howell said on Twitter. He was referring to an incident in March 2015 when TSA Northeast reunited an owner with a chihuahua found inside their checked luggage at LaGuardia Airport in New York.

Much more recently, a cat was found in someone’s luggage at John F. Kennedy airport, McClatchy News reported.

“Traveler said the cat belonged to someone else in his household,” TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein said in November. “On the bright side, the cat’s out of the bag and safely back home.”

This story was originally published December 7, 2022 at 9:07 AM with the headline "Dog goes through X-ray at airport, photo shows. ‘Not the first Chihuahua we’ve seen’."