Pilots N Paws' lofty goal: Save 5,000 unwanted pets

The skies next month will be filled with thousands of dogs, cats and other creatures escaping death row through the kindness of strangers.

From Sept. 12 to Sept. 20, small-plane pilots — who for 18 months have been volunteering their planes, fuel and time to fly pets from high-kill shelters to areas where there's space and demand for them — are aiming to fly 5,000 animals.

It's an ambitious goal," says Debi Boies, co-founder of Pilots N Paws (PNP), a non-profit message board that allows animal shelters and pet rescue groups to post their transport needs so general-aviation pilots willing to fly an animal can provide the means.

In the 18 months since PNP was born, 604 pilots have signed up, and more than 1,000 animals have been flown. Retired businessman and PNP co-founder Jon Wehrenberg rallied pilot interest after learning that over 6 million animals are euthanized in shelters every year, most of them because they are in an area of rampant pet overpopulation.

A menagerie of dogs, cats, snakes, pig --Beagles, Border collies, Dobermans, Greyhounds, Shih Tzus and scores of other breeds and mixed breeds; seniors and puppies; plus a few cats, rabbits, a pot-bellied pig and even some reptiles — all have been transported without incident, Boies says.There have been some weather delays, pilots have sometimes had to spend a night with an animal or two before continuing, and in some bad-weather instances a pilot has landed the plane and finished the trip on the ground. But by all reports, the animals are generally calm and the transfers are made with military precision.

Transferring animals from overpopulated areas — mostly in the South — to mostly Northern states, where pet sterilization has long been practiced, is not new. Volunteer rescuers ply highways every weekend, saving animals two or three or nine at a time. But the journey is long, it takes scores of people to drive part of the way and link up with others in parking lots, and it's stressful for the animals as well as expensive for the rescuers.

'Working every avenue' of rescue
-- PNP hopes the September event will increase awareness and prompt even more rescuers and pilots to sign on.

"We're working every avenue we can think of to make sure that, in addition to the usual number of animals saved through our flights every week, we get thousands more to new homes in September," O'Connell says.

Every pilot finds these flights "gratifying," he says. They share stories online about dogs with trusting eyes, climbing into the crates and quickly settling down, as if they know this is their shot at a new beginning.

And yet every pilot also knows "you're just a drop" in a situation that requires an ocean of help. Pilots photograph the animals they fly, remember them by name and take comfort that five or 15 were saved this week. "We're so happy to help," O'Connell says.

But in the end, "my dream is that this could be the last 5,000 we ever have to do."