One of our favorite pups Abba just let us know that the matching campaign has been increased! Every gift through the end of the year will be doubled up to $50,000. We are so grateful for our amazing community of animal-lovers who make this work possible. Please join us and make a lifesaving gift to help us stay ‘Wheels Up’.
To help celebrate the 30,000 animals saved, a special donor and his sweet dog, Abba (“Take Chance On Me”) have generously stepped forward to match every gift dollar-for-dollar, through December 31st, up to an incredible total of $50,000. I hope that you will join us in reaching this goal today!
While it is so hard to see thousands of at-risk animals in shelters waiting for homes, we know that things will get better. We have saved tens of thousands of animals, and, thanks to supporters just like you, we have witnessed so many happy faces when animals find homes across the country. It feels great to be part of the solution.
We are grateful for all the supporters who have allowed us to reach this incredible milestone of 30,000 lives saved. Every animal we fly does not just save one life—it saves two, the one that is rescued and the one that takes its place in the shelter. In essence, the 30,000 shelter pets we have flown since 2012 is more like 60,000 lives saved. We would love to get them all together in one room, but we would need a stadium for this fun filled event! We hope Hercules’ story and Shafter’s rapid transformation encourage animal lovers like you to continue to support our mission and we hope you will consider a gift to help us stay ‘wheels up’.
Approaching the year’s end, we reflect on the countless lives we have touched, both of animals and people. Hercules’s journey began in Presidio, Texas, a small town on the US-Mexico border. The Presidio Animal Shelter is a six kennel steel shed with no supplies, no budget for veterinary care, no volunteers and no adoptions (just one dog was adopted in the last 24 months). Without the support of other rescues, dogs that enter the shelter don’t make it out alive. At 9 years old, when Hercules was surrendered to the shelter, he had spent his entire life living tied to a chain. After experiencing Hercules’ openness to love, one of our rescue partners, The Underground Dog, pulled him from the shelter and we flew him to Chicago to our no-kill shelter partner, One Tail At A Time. Hercules also holds a special place in our hearts as our 30,000th dog flown to safety!
Happy Tails is what we all wait for, right?! Shafter is HOME and is another example of a passenger we flew that deserved to live the ‘Good Life’. This gentle giant stole the hearts of shelter staff and visitors with his big block head, goofy demeanour, and his permanently crossed eyes. Despite his adorable face and kind manner he was amongst the 350 + animals stuck in the El Paso Animal Shelter. After over 200 days of waiting he finally got the “Golden-Ticket” on a rescue flight to our friends and partners, One Tail At A Time PDX in Portland, Oregon. Thanks to a foster family who said yes, he quickly became a foster fail and landed in the perfect home.
Our pilots are heroes in their own right. We have two planes flying tens of thousands of miles each with an average of 75 animals on board. Some of the most heart-warming moments occur when our pilots fly an animal tagged with the name of their adopter, witnessing the initial reactions from both the dog and new family. The animals seem to sense that they’re heading to a good place, and the positive energy surrounding these experiences keeps our pilots flying day in and day out.