Building partners and saving more lives together

Building partners →  growing flights

Many municpal shelters across the country are overcrowded with amazing adoptable animals. When we visit our partner shelters, we can see first hand, large and medium sized dogs are typically the most overlooked and the hardest animals to adopt, which results in these animals being in shelters for a very long time. We  fly out of Los Angeles, where hundreds of dogs are  waiting in shelters often times for months at a time while they wait for an outlet or adopter. 

Our New Partner in L.A.

Paws for Life K9 Rescue is a non-profit in L.A. that’s connected with Dog Is My CoPilot to help coordinate rescue flights out of Los Angeles. Paws For Life K9 Rescue pulls its dogs from L.A shelters. Often, they choose dogs in need of socialization and training which they place with their incarcerated trainers throughout California State Prisons. They do this because they can dedicate all of their time to their rehabilitation. Despite facing lengthy sentences behind bars, the trainers have forged a new model for rehabilitation and have taken their learnings into their lives after prison. Paws for Life goes above and beyond by evaluating the dogs and even organizing play group assessments. The organization helps to take videos and pictures of the potential dogs for transport and send this information to the receiving organization so they know more about each animal before it arrives and is looking for a home. This extra step is key for receiving partners, which helps provide even more information on large breed dogs that will lead to a more successful placement and ultimately a home!

A Dog that Tells the Story

Meet Stegosaurus. He’s a six year old blind pitbull and is an example of the many medium to large dogs that can be a challenge to adopt. When there are so many dogs to choose from in large shelters in L.A, dogs with special needs like Stegosaurus are hard to find homes. It takes partners that are willing and able to collaborate on these challenging cases to find new families willing to adopt these loving animals. We recently flew Stegosaurus to One Tail at a TIme – Portland where he is waiting to find his family.  

If you’re considering adopting an animal, please visit our partners page to see the organizations we partner with and  learn more about pets available for adoption! 

The start of a Long Term Partnership 

Dog Is My CoPilot is excited to have so many great partnerships in the greater Los Angeles area. A selection of our new partners include:  L.A. Animal Services, a city run organization that maintains 6 shelters across L.A and is one of that largest municipal shelters in the US; Angel City Pit Bull, a foster-based only program that was founded to address the problem of overpopulation and high euthanasia rate of pit bull terrier type dogs in Los Angeles shelters; Best Friends Animal Society – Los Angeles, who did all the health checks for the animals on our last transport, and have been running the nation’s largest no-kill sanctuary for companion animals.

Let’s Not Forget the Kittens

Along with Stegosaurus and 18 other dogs, we transported 102 kittens from L.A. to Portland Oregon on our last flight. We’re in the middle of kitten season and they’re overflowing in shelters across L.A. Managing cat populations in large cities is a real challenge. We are proud supporters of programs like the  Spay Neuter Project of L.A., the largest nonprofit spay and neuter animal welfare organization in California.  This organization is trying to maintain the population as well as get kittens into loving homes in other places in the country.  Another amazing kitten partners included,  Perry’s Place Heaven on Earth and Kitty Bungalow!

Collaboration is Key

Working together saves lives and thanks to the amazing partnerships above, 102 kittens and 19 dogs will be continuing their journey home this week! We’ve covered hundreds of miles to deliver this plane load to Portland, Oregon, Boise, Idaho and Coeur d’Alene, ID and we could not make these flights possible without organizations like Paws for Life K9 Rescue.  We look forward to growing this and other partnerships in the flights, and years to come.