Cloud Nine Rescue Flights

In the middle of last week, Kylie Troy with the Animal Adoption League in York, SC contacted me with a request for moving some animals last week, after having heard about Cloud Nine Rescue Flights. I told her we’d be glad to help, but there was one problem – she didn’t have enough animals to fill the crates! Well, that’s an easy enough problem to fill. Oh, other thing, can they be ready to go this weekend? Sure!

During the week the dogs being transported shifted a few times, but we ended up with 15 dogs for a planned weekend trip coming from both Greenville, SC and York, SC. I recruited Barb, a friend and student pilot, to be co-pilot and make the flight down with me to help handle the dogs. Saturday, September 12th, we loaded up the Aztec after lunch and made the trip down to Spartanburg, SC. Spartanburg was a convenient mid-point between York and Greenville. We landed there late afternoon after an easy flight (but a lot of time in the clouds), and grabbed the airport car as well as picked up our first two passengers from Sherry, Red and Toby. We then headed to the hotel where we met Anita and Laura, who transported a litter of 7 adorable hound mix puppies to us, meaning we had 9 of our passengers. These dogs would spend the night with us at the hotel. We ended up eating dinner in the hotel with Anita and Laura so we could spend some time with Red and Toby. They proved to be some wonderful dogs with great personalities, who would be sure to make some lucky families happy.

But wait! The title says 16 dogs, and a few paragraphs up I said 15 from Kylie. While eating dinner, I got an eMail from Rhonda Sims of Freedom Train Animal Rescue Transports asking me if I had room for just one more, a darling by the name of Pretty Girl. After looking over the dogs and the cage sizes (plus having 9 of the dogs right in front of me), I told her we’d have room, so to go ahead and bring Pretty Girl to Spartanburg airport at 8 AM.

Getting the Aztec loaded up and ready to go!

Sunday morning we got to the Spartanburg airport at 8 AM after getting the puppies and Red and Toby walked, where we met Kylie with the remaining dogs, as well as Jackie, who’d brought Pretty Girl up. Additionally, WYFF came to do a story on Cloud Nine and this transport.

Two of the dogs getting walked.

Me with one of the hound mix puppies.

Loading up was an adventure, as it always is, but fortunately we had enough people working on the dogs to make the work easy. All the animals were loaded up into their cages, and after saying goodbye to everyone, Barb and I hopped in and took off, heading for our first stop: Syracuse, NY.

Barb with another hound mix puppy.

Barb walking sweet Caroline.

The 4-hour flight was great. The animals all behaved well, and most of the trip was in perfectly clear skies – the kind of flying days that you always hope for. The dogs slept for the trip, especially the 7 puppies. They were sitting behind Barb, which gave me a great view of them all piled up together, dozing away. Every now and then one of them would wake up, yawn, stretch, and generally step on his or her brother or sister. As we approached Syracuse it was clear that the forecasts weren’t as nice as predicted, and we ended up having to shoot the ILS 28 instrument approach into Syracuse airport. No big deal, and we had a smooth landing for our passengers.

See? Dog really IS my co-pilot! Or at least my passenger.

In Syracuse we had three shelters come to pick up eight of the dogs, along with two local news stations who came out to document what was going on. Whenever we get the opportunity to meet with the media, we try to emphasize the problem of animal overpopulation that has reached epidemic proportions. The reality is we can do these transports all we want, but they are not the solution to the problem, they’re just a band-aid. It was clear that these shelters would take good care of the animals they received, and find them good homes in short order.

Me with another one of our passengers.

Barb and I loaded up to continue our trip on, up to Manchester, where we would drop off pretty girl and the puppies. On that flight the puppies continued their napping. As we were flying I looked back at them and thought to myself how this is what it’s all about, and what makes it worth it. These lives went from certain death to being ready to get adopted out to loving homes. A short trip with tailwinds brought us there, and our receivers were there ready and waiting, along with another local news station. We got a lot of positive press on this trip! The adorable puppies were clearly the stars in this case. They were dropped off, and after getting dinner with Adam, a friend of mine who lives in Manchester, Barb and I hopped back in the Aztec for the last leg of the trip back to Williamsport.

How could anyone not smile at this sight? The puppies were all curled up together and slept like perfect little angels the whole flight. All of them were on death row.

This was a fairly standard routine trip, and a good example of how these animal transports work. Dedicated senders and receivers do all the leg work to get the dogs matched with good shelters that will make sure they find good homes. We get to do the fun part of getting them there. However doing this same transport by ground (which is how it would typically be done) would end up requiring multiple vehicles and several days worth of travel. Here, aviation shines as a means of getting more done more quickly – the whole purpose behind Cloud Nine Rescue Flights.

The sight out the window on our flight up to Syracuse.

While this was the first time I worked with Kylie on a mission, it certainly won’t be the last! She did a great job of making my job easy. I extend my thanks to her and all the other volunteers who came together to make this mission a success. None of these missions are accomplished by any one individual, they’re the result of many people working together to make it happen.

Here are links to this weekend’s news coverage:

http://www.wyff4.com/news/20891369/detail.html
http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/stor…A.cspx?rss=112
http://www.cnycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=349730
http://www.wmur.com/news/20896235/detail.html?taf=man

I’m sorry this blog entry took so long, but I have a good reason! I’ve been working away planning this coming weekend’s transport. Stay tuned!

Blue skies,

-Ted