Pilots like to go out and fly just like people want to go out and ski,” says Jon Wehrenberg, who co-founded South Carolina–based charity Pilots N Paws with his friend Debi Boies. Hard economic times give them a better reason to stretch their wings: transporting cats and dogs about to be euthanized at overcrowded shelters to safe havens in other states.
Matching private pilots with animal-rescue workers is the mission of Pilots N Paws, a Web-based group that provides a forum for pilots to post availability and rescue organizations to post requests for animals that need saving. For recreational fliers like Ken Clayton, a 48-year-old obstetrician-gynecologist from La Verne, Calif., this meant a recent 500-nautical-mile journey with a 110-pound bullmastiff named Sheriff , a 70-pound rottweiler named Lazarus and a special-needs cat with deformed front paws named Blessing from south of Los Angeles to Redding, Calif.
The trip was just one leg of a plan initiated by a rescue organizer based in Austin, Tex . The organizer posted a plea for transportation on the Pilots N Paws Web site to get the dogs to a rescue shelter in Port Orchard, Wash., and Blessing to a new adopted home in Beaverton, Ore. Clayton answered the posting. “I love to fly and it’s good to have a reason to do it,” Clayton says. “ It’s important to me that I can save them from being euthanized.”
What makes Pilots N Paws more successful than many other animal-transport rescue groups is the speed and distance achieved by using planes, allowing for a significantly larger number of animals to be saved. Since the group started in 2007, almost 1,000 volunteer pilots have signed up and more than 6,000 animals have been saved—which included a massive successful push to transport 5,000 animals in September alone. The charity now aims to recruit 10,000 private pilots so any transport request gets answered. Boies says that’s not unrealistic. “That may sound bigger than life, but there are about 400,000 general aviation pilots in the U.S.”
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The majority of the animals go from southern states to states in the Northeast, where more stringent spay and neuter ordinances have left shelters less crowded. But animal shelters say all the areas that have been hit by home foreclosures—California, Nevada and Arizona in particular—are seeing more abandoned animals.
Most trips are handled by one pilot, so there’s no worry about a leg of the relay breaking down. Pilots pay for the fuel, getting a tax exemption for their costs if they choose, as the organization is a certified nonprofit. Many fuel stations at airports give discounts of as much as 50 percent.
Boies, a former nurse who worked with a rescue organization for Doberman pinschers, decided to set up the charity after her 12-year-old Doberman, Carly, died in 2008. A group in Florida had a suitable replacement, a Doberman named Bob, but Boies didn’t want to do the drive. When she told her friend Wehrenberg about her problem, he offered to go pick up Bob. Boies now works as a full-time volunteer from her home in Landrum, S.C., answering hundreds of emails a day from shelters, rescue workers and pilots, and coordinating some rescues.
While the number of animals euthanized across the country has dropped significantly from some 20 million a year in the 1970s because of spay and neuter programs, there are still about four million cats and dogs killed a year—about half the eight million that enter shelters. “We’re just making a dent,” says Jim Carney, a 64-year old retired commercial pilot from Germantown, Tenn., who has done 18 rescue runs since joining last spring.
Still, Boies is often asked why they fly animals around when there are people in need. She responds that stray animals are a “man-made problem that man has an obligation to resolve.” And, she says, it’s everyone’s right to choose how they want to help. Says Betsy McFarland, senior director of companion animals at the Humane Society: “They’re not mutually exclusive. Sixty percent of Americans have pets. People love animals.”
By Nancy Keates
Get Involved
Pilots N Paws based out of South Carolina, matches private pilots with animal-rescue workers to transport cats and dogs about to be euthanized at overcrowded shelters to safe havens in other states. Pilotsnpaws.org
Freedom Train Transports, started by an Anderson, S.C. woman in 2006, is a volunteer-based organization that transports animals mostly from the south to the northeast in “legs”—60-90 minute coordinated car rides. There are as many as 16 drivers for each trip (it has moved 3,000 animals in the past three years). Freedomtraintransports.com
Roads of Hope operates out of Austin, Texas. It’s also a volunteer-based program that helps get animals from shelters to proper homes. Also, they help military get their pets to relative or other homes while they are deployed. They provide legs of a trip from 1 hour to 1.5 hours, across the country. Roadsofhope.org
Operation Roger, based out of Joshua, Texas, is a group of regional and long-haul truckers who take along rescued animals that just celebrated their 4th anniversary this past September. Operationroger.rescuegroups.org
Animal Rescue Flights is another pilot-run outfit, they operate mostly on the east coast and more like the car-based groups, they link a series of four to five different airplanes together. Animalrescueflights.org
