A pet transport service will make your life a whole hell of a lot easier and the cost for the service itself is not that much compared to the bottom line cost of transporting a large animal. Ours made sure we had all the paperwork correct and where it needed to be when it needed to be there, made sure we had the right crate, booked the spot on the plane and made sure we had and understood our options when our large dog literally couldn't fly out of the city we were staying in prior to our move (his crate was too big for the planes flying out of Denver), booked the mobile vet to come get us cleared at the airport, etc. If you can afford one, get one. You're already doing this on hard mode with a 65lb. dog. Obviously this is breed dependent but my 50lb standard poodle was BARELY short enough for the largest commercially available airline-approved crate. If he'd been an inch taller we would have had to pay for a custom crate. And if you try to fudge it you can easily end up with your dog being denied passage because they don't fuck around with regulations. Another place that our agent made a difference; she made a call on it we couldn't have possibly made ourselves and it was the right one.