It was a shocking afternoon for one TSA screener at a Wisconsin airport. The Great Lakes TSA tweeted out their surprising find during a routine baggage screening, stunning followers with what they caught in one passenger’s carry-on luggage. After a tweet from the TSA about their find, reactions ranged from curiosity to downright angry over what the traveler left in her bag when sending it through screening.

Instead of the expected clothes and travel items inside the black backpack, what TSA screeners found was a dog resting calmly inside the backpack. Announcing the unusual moment on Twitter, the TSA of Great Lakes said “A dog was accidentally sent through the X-ray,” at Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wis. 

The airport shared photos that showed the pup splayed out in the bag, surprisingly relaxed despite its current predicament. The dog’s owner, ABC affiliate WISN reported, had allegedly forgotten to alert TSA screeners that her dog was in the bag before sending the well-behaved pup through the scanner.

A dog was accidentally sent through the X-ray @MSN_Airport this week. When traveling with any animal, notify your airline & know their rules. At the checkpoint, remove your pet from the bag and send all items, including the empty carrier, to be screened in the machine. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/JLOStCDsir

— TSA_GreatLakes (@TSA_GreatLakes) December 6, 2022

TSA Great Lakes’ tweet had some Twitter users up in arms over whether or not the owner should be charged with abuse of an animal. The tweet did not mention whether or not hiding the pooch was part of a plan to escape TSA notice, or if the owner had accidentally forgotten that she packed a dog in her carry-on. 

Commenters wasted no time in expressing their opinions:

• “Accidental my gluteus max. Somebody tried to evade the rules, or become a headline … 100% purposely done”
• “That dog owner needs to be put in jail for treating her fur baby so cruel!!”
• “So are we all avoiding the question of … is the dog okay?”

Airport spokeswoman Jessica Mayle later told news station Channel 3000 that the pup’s owner had just forgotten to remove the dog from her backpack, but had, in fact, alerted the airline prior to this that she was traveling with an animal. Mayle went on to say that the TSA thought the dog carrier looked like a backpack, “so they kind of put the bag face down in the bin.

So our officers did not know there was an animal inside and they sent the whole thing through, and then, of course, our officers are looking at the X-ray images, they see a dog on the screen and they say, ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t right.’” After noticing the packaged pet, they went and located the passenger, choosing to use the mistake as a teaching moment. 

In this case, it was just somebody who was naïve about the screening process and she just didn’t know the rules, so there was no malicious intent or anything there.”

Both pooch and its human were allowed to continue on their journey, with the dog now safe and the owner a bit wiser. The TSA also took the hidden pooch as an opportunity to inform the public that anyone wanting to take their pets along with them on an airplane, to “notify your airline and know their rules.” 

“At the checkpoint, remove your pet from the bag and send all items, including the empty carrier, to be screened in the machine,” the travel authorities explained. Coincidentally, this incident comes less than a month after ‘Smelly the cat’ was X-rayed at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. That particular traveler said their sly cat had made its own way into their bag, unbeknownst to them.

Sources: Daily Mail ⎸NYPost ⎸Channel 3000 ⎸WISN