Cloud Nine Rescue Flights

Early in the week I sarted doing my planning for the upcoming weekend’s transport. I ended up doing another transport that had a number of the same players involved as the previous weekend’s transport! Kylie Troy of the Animal Adoption League had already said if I happened to be coming to the same area the next weekend, she had some additional dogs that needed transported. I also spoke with Rhonda Sims of Freedom Train Animal Rescue Transports, who had a number of dogs that needed to come up north. In coordinating with the two of them, it looked like we’d have a good load of dogs that would fill the crates. In the end, I dropped off one dog in Syracuse, eight in New Hampshire, and then three continued on to Maine with my friend Adam Bezanson in his plane, a Trinidad.

Dytter examining the five puppies that were coming along on the trip. Dytter wanted to be a troublemaker! All very sweet dogs.

I’ve gotten a few questions as to why I only dropped off one dog in Syracuse (not standard practice), and why the plane wasn’t full for the flight. We did have one empty cage. It’s a good question, as we always strive to keep the plane full and save as many animals as possible. However, the week ended up having a lot of last-minute changes. I blame myself for this, as on Wednesday I made the mistake of saying “This is coming together really smoothly!” Clearly Murphy heard me say that, and decided to invoke his law. Without going into too many of the details, the number of dogs being transported went from 14 to 12 to 15 back to 12, and ended up settling at 12. We had initially planned on dropping off three or more dogs in Syracuse, however they ended up not being able to get their health certificates in time, which is a legal requirement to transport the animals. Some logistical issues cropped up as well. While we’re normally fortunate enough to have these transports go off without a hitch and, if anything, transport more than we intended (such as last weekend), they don’t always work that way. When that happens, we make the best of it and transport what we can. In this case, it made sense to transport the one dog to Syracuse. Although it may look very out of the way, there’s not a significant addition in mileage to stop in Syracuse en route to Manchester (especially with the big airspace around DC, Philadelphia, NYC, and Boston that always have significant diversions), and we needed to make a fuel stop anyway. The logistics and planning that go into these transports is the hardest part of them, and I’d like to emphasize that the people who do that part of these have a tremendously difficult job, and do it very well. Now, to the actual transport!

Cages stacked and ready to get loaded up with dogs into the plane!

Sunday morning we got to the Spartanburg airport at 8 AM, with animals coming from opposite directions (York and Anderson). Spartanburg is a good middle point, and the airport manager was kind enough to let me borrow the courtesy car overnight. The morning was rainy, with moderate precipitation showing up on the radar for the whole first third of the route, and low ceilings. We managed to get the dogs loaded up efficiently and with little trouble, although some of them clearly wanted to be troublemakers! The fact that we were minus a few dogs ended up being a good thing in one way. The 5 puppies being transported were significantly larger than the last batch of puppies I transported, and it was better to have them split into two crates, so we only ended up with one empty crate.

Ted and Rhonda with the sweet boxer mix. This poor boy was extremely timid due to some poor treatment previously in his life. Getting him out of his cage took close to 10 minutes of coaxing once we got to Manchester.

After getting the dogs loaded up, we took off into the cloudy sky, with 700 ft overcast ceilings. On days like that, you pretty much feel like you take off right into the cloud. For the first half of the flight, it was solid instrument conditions, however once we got to the northern part of West Virginia the skies cleared up some, and it turned into a gorgeous day. By the time we got to Syracuse, it was a perfectly clear sky, and continued that way for the trip to New Hampshire.

Seeing sights like this makes it all worth it. The puppies slept for most of the trip, waking up only on occasion to poke around and see what was going on.

We made a quick stop off and fuel up in Syracuse before continuing on to New Hampshire. The flight was really quite uneventful. All the dogs behaved well, only barking on the ground but getting quiet as soon as the engines started up, and stayed quiet during the flight. It’s always easier when the passengers are well behaved!

At Manchester airport, Ruby carefully surveys the surroundings before deciding to jump out. She’s a big girl, but a heart of gold.

In Manchester, we unloaded the remainder of the dogs. My friend Adam Bezanson had agreed to take three of the dogs the rest of the way to Maine. There was quite a crowd waiting for me when I arrived, I ended up walking into the airport and getting a large “Hi Ted!” greeting. Nice treatment! The unloading went smoothly, although the poor boxer who Adam was taking to Maine was clearly not a big fan of people. Coaxing him out of his cage so we could move it more easily took several minutes. He hadn’t been treated well in the shelter where he had been. Despite this, he was very gentle and sweet, it’ll just take some more love before he opens up to people better.

Carla got to poke her head out and say hi for a bit. She was heading up to Maine. I let her out of the cage for a little bit, but she wanted to crawl down and hide.

Me holding one of the puppies that we transported. They already have three adoption applications!

Despite not having the number of dogs originally planned, this was still a very successful transport. We managed to transport 12 animals, which is no small feat. While this is the smallest number we’ve done in a while, it’s important to remember that most animal transports are only one or two on average, and it’s all dependent on the size. We ended up having a number of good-sized dogs, including one that was large enough that she needed to be harnessed in back, and wouldn’t have fit in the cages. She weighed in at about 80 lbs, but was perfectly sweet and loving. We’ll be heading back down to South Carolina for another transport before long!

Happy dogs! Time for them to go find their forever homes!