Dog Is My Copilot: Rescue Tales of Flying Dogs, Second Chances, and the Hero Who Might Live Next Door

by Patrick Regan

  A post-op Cassidy walks the halls of a veterinary hospital in Columbia, Missouri.

  “There are times I get very angry and depressed,” she concedes. “It’s so hard to see the need and not have resources to help them all. I remind myself that I can’t save the world, but rescue means the world to the one dog you can help.”

  Home at Last, Home for Good

  NAME: Sammie

  BREED: Golden retriever

  AGE: Three years

  TOTAL MILEAGE: 733

  ROUTE:

  Knoxville, Tennessee–Orange, Virginia

  Orange, Virginia–Hartford, Connecticut

  Turned out of one home in rural eastern Tennessee and neglected by a second, Sammie spent much of her time wandering along a nearby highway. By the time she was spotted by an animal-rescue volunteer, in December 2009, she had been hobbled by a broken bone in her right leg and lost sight in one eye, almost certainly the result of being hit by a car.

  With permission from her indifferent owners, the rescuer took the three-year-old golden retriever to Heartland Golden Retriever Rescue in Knoxville, Tennessee. After three months of care and therapy—including regular hydrotherapy sessions where Sammie exercised her badly atrophied leg in a swimming pool—she had recovered enough to be offered for adoption.

  Pauline Stevens, who runs Heartland, remembers Sammie as “a true golden in every sense—her temperament, looks, size—and her affectionate nature. . . . She would literally lean into you for more love,” recalls Stevens. But the veteran rescue volunteer also got a sense of Sammie’s mettle. “She wanted so badly to please, and even though it must have hurt her to do some of the things we asked her to do [for physical therapy], she was still willing to give it her all.” Under the care of Heartland; the Lenoir City Animal Clinic, where Sammie was boarded; and Barkside Lodge, where she underwent her hydrotherapy, Sammie, according to Stevens, “blossomed into a beautiful dog.”

  Top: Sammie undergoes hydrotherapy in Tennessee. Bottom: Transferring Sammie in Virginia. Pictured: PNP pilots Tom Nalle (kneeling) and Martin Hobson (right). Nalle’s daughter and Hobson’s son assisted on the flights.

  Not long after, at home in Massachusetts, Kristen Smolski saw Sammie on Heartland’s Web site. Touched by her story and her smile, Smolski submitted an adoption application. “People joke that it’s easier to adopt a baby than one of our dogs,” says Stevens of her rescue’s stringent application requirements. But in Smolski, she sensed a perfect match for Sammie.

  A run-in wtih a car left Sammie blind in one eye.

  Sammie and Caitlin Nalle enjoy a moment in the sun.

  Pilot Tom Nalle is a friend and neighbor of Pauline Stevens in Knoxville, and has helped her transport many dogs to the New England area. In early March 2010, Nalle and his daughter, Caitlin, loaded Sammie into his Mooney M20E in Knoxville, and flew to Orange, Virginia, where he met up with another PNP volunteer, Martin Hobson. Hobson and his son flew Sammie to Hartford, Connecticut.

  “The evening before the flight, I knelt down next to her to give her a hug. She moved up close and leaned heavily against me, placed her head on my shoulder, and just sat there completely still with her weight against me. I’ll never forget that. She was so happy just to be held. Knowing her history gave me a sense that she was truly a remarkable animal.”

  —Tom Nalle, PNP pilot

  On the ramp in Hartford, Kristen Smolski met Sammie for the first time. “I don’t think I slept at all the night before,” recalls Smolski. “I was like a kid at Christmas.” Once home, Sammie met her new big sister, a five-year-old golden named Harley. Within minutes they were inseparable—two big, boisterous girls lost in a game of tug-of-war in the backyard.

  To Pauline Stevens, Tom Nalle, Martin Hobson, and Pilots N Paws, Kristen Smolski will be forever grateful. “I don’t have any kids, so my dogs are my children, and basically they brought together a family. That’s how I look at it.”

  Tom Nalle and daughter Caitlin shuttle Sammie to Virginia.

  Sammie meets new mom Kristen Smolski as rescue volunteer Susan Simon and Abby Simon-Plumb look on.

  Appetite for Aviation

  NAME: Newman

  BREED: Australian shepherd

  AGE: Unknown

  TOTAL MILEAGE:

  698

  ROUTE:

  Dacula, Georgia–Chattanooga, Tennessee*

  Chattanooga, Tennessee–Hamilton, Ohio

  Hamilton, Ohio–Riverdale, Michigan

  * Ground (car) transport leg

  Tennessee-based pilot Rhonda Miles has flown more than fifty dogs on behalf of Pilots N Paws, but one particular passenger stands out. Newman was a deaf Australian shepherd on a multileg trip north to Michigan. Miles tells the story of their brief but memorable time together:

  Newman was my only passenger, so I let him roam around the back of the plane. He was a sweet boy, and would put his head on my shoulder and ride looking out the front. Every now and then he would wander to the back and lie down for a bit, but he always returned. When I checked in with Cincinnati Center, they vectored me around the east side of their airspace and then toward Hamilton. They told me to let them know when I had Hamilton’s airport in sight. I reached over to my right seat to pick up the printout of the airport diagram and the airport frequencies, but couldn’t find it. I looked in the back and Newman was eating it! I had to call Cincinnati and say, “This is going to sound stupid, but this is a dog-rescue flight, and my dog ate my paperwork. Can you give me frequencies?” . . . Over the radio, I could hear the controllers laughing as they helped me out.

  Miles reports that Newman went on to an alpaca farm, where he started learning sign language. “I always wondered what the sign is for ‘Cough it up, Bud.’”

  Rhonda Miles and Newman.

  Angel Gets Her Wings

  NAME: Angel

  BREED: Labrador mix

  AGE: Eight years

  TOTAL MILEAGE:

  1,548

  ROUTE:

  Columbus County, North Carolina–Knoxville, Tennessee

  Knoxville, Tennessee–Kennett, Missouri

  Kennett, Missouri–Kansas City, Kansas

  Kansas City, Kansas–Fort Collins, Colorado

  Empathy is the heart of animal rescue—but technology is the central nervous system. The grassroots online network that has grown around the rescue, foster, transport, and adoption of homeless animals would make any political action committee envious. The Internet, Facebook, Yahoo! groups, and pet adoption sites allow millions of committed people to connect across thousands of miles—making it possible for an abandoned dog in North Carolina to find a new home in Colorado within a matter of days. In bottom-line terms, technology allows the gross oversupply of animals in one part of the country to meet keen demand in other parts.

  Mala Brady discovered this network by accident in 2009 while signing an online petition protesting an animal cruelty incident in her home state of Colorado.

  “When I signed it and read the comments I realized there is a whole network of animal lovers working to save animals,” she explains. “There are adopters, rescues, pullers [people who pull the animals from a shelter], transports, crossposters [who post homeless dogs to multiple social-networking sites, forums, and message boards], and ChipIn people [who create and post PayPal ChipIn widgets so others can donate to help cover the various pull fees shelters charge].”

  As a devoted animal lover, Brady decided to join the movement. She created a Facebook page dedicated to animal welfare, started “friending” people who seemed the most involved, and soon was crossposting pleas for animals in shelters.

  She had become another vital link in the network connecting animals in need with willing adopters, but, having a pretty fair-sized rescued menagerie already, she hadn’t planned to adopt any animals herself. That changed the day she posted a picture of a dog in the Columbus County, North Carolina, Animal Control shelter.

  Angel takes a preflight peek from Keith Decker’s Cessna.<
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  “It’s difficult to describe, but she touched a place deep in my heart,” says Brady. “I knew from the minute I saw her she would be our dog.”

  The dog had no name, only the designation K-38. Brady called the shelter to get more information. The good: The staff said she was very sweet. The bad: She suffered a host of health problems due to owner negligence. Estimated to be around eight years old, she had arthritis in her hips, a severe flea infestation, and poor mobility due to weak hindquarters. She was heartworm-positive. She was also twenty minutes away from her euthanasia deadline.

  Brady didn’t waste one of those minutes. Reaching out to her rescue network, she arranged to have K-38 pulled. Once pulled, the dog received a cursory vetting with vaccinations and flea treatment. The adoption fee provided for ten days’ boarding. Now Brady had to find a way to get the dog halfway across the country to Colorado.

  Ground transport would have been physically difficult for a dog of her age and condition, and prohibitively expensive—a commercial flight even more so. Brady had heard of Pilots N Paws but had never posted to it before. She decided to give it a shot. Two pilots, Jim Carney and Jim Bordoni, each volunteered to fly a leg. Those two took it upon themselves to find two others—Keith Decker and Mitchell Stafford—to complete the transport. Bordoni also arranged a two-night foster in Kansas City, Kansas, before the final leg of the flight. None of the pilots had any previous connection with Mala Brady. Each of them spent hundreds of dollars of their own money to deliver her dog.

  Upon landing in Colorado, K-38 got a new name.

  “We named her Angel in honor of all of the angels who were a part of her rescue,” says Brady. “Everyone involved in her rescue is an angel in my book,” she continues, “but the pilots really stand out. They make it possible for animals to be saved by providing the transportation, which is one of the most difficult aspects of rescue. What is most wonderful, though, is that they truly care. I stay in touch with Jim and Jim, and count them as friends.”

  “If it were not for Jim and Jim’s help I would not have been able to do it. They called me, e-mailed me, and told me how to track the flights. They sent pictures of her along the way. I actually felt like I was there, too.”

  —Mala Brady

  PNP pilots Jim Carney (left) and Jim Bordoni with Angel.

  Angel is thriving in her Colorado home. She’s put on weight and muscle. She bounds up the stairs she once struggled to climb and plays with the Brady’s four other dogs. In the fall she ferrets out and munches apples fallen from the tree and in winter she gleefully plows her nose through the snow. “It’s hard to believe she’s the same dog,” says Brady.

  Brady knows how lucky she and Angel are to have found each other. The effect of her direct experience with PNP was profound. “After posting so many dogs that have suffered at the hands of people who are supposed to be their caregivers, it restores my faith in people,” she says. It has also motivated her to “pay it forward.” Since adopting Angel, she’s helped coordinate several other animal transports through PNP.

  “And every one of the pilots,” she says, “has been terrific!”

  Mojo and Mom

  NAME: Mojo

  BREED: Dachshund

  AGE: Four years

  TOTAL MILEAGE:

  273

  ROUTE:

  Marianna, Florida–Lakeland, Florida

  For years, Devon and Jill Barger tried in vain to persuade Jill’s mother, Mary Palmer, to adopt a dog for companionship. The ninety-five-year-old resisted. “She would always say she wasn’t home enough to take care of an animal—which was true until her eyesight went,” says Devon.

  In recent years, macular degeneration has robbed Mary Palmer of much of her sight. No longer able to drive or live on her own, she moved from Connecticut to Florida to live with her daughter and son-in-law.

  As an avid general-aviation pilot, Devon began volunteering to transport animals through Pilots N Paws shortly after the organization was launched in 2008. Flying out of St. Augustine, Florida, with Jill as nonpilot navigator, Devon had transported sixty animals by the end of 2010. Occasionally, his mother-in-law would fly along on their missions.

  In January 2010, the Bargers answered a PNP request to transport several dogs from Marianna to Lakeland, Florida. Mary decided to ride along for the scenic flight along Florida’s Gulf Coast. Devon remembers the day well—and the perfect opportunity that presented itself.

  “It was a full load that day—eight dogs, I think—and we ran out of cages. One little guy that may have been left behind was a buckskin-colored dachshund. He was four years old and had been abandoned at a vet’s office by his owners. ‘Monroe’ arrived in a leather flight jacket with the word ‘copilot’ embossed on the back. He could not have been cuter or more affectionate. Funny how it turned out, but my mother-in-law’s lap was the only empty seat in the house.”

  Barger continues, taking obvious delight in this story’s conclusion. “The two spent the better part of three hours in flight, and they were hooked on each other. Monroe disappeared off the flight manifest and came home with us to St. Augustine.”

  Monroe, now known as “Mojo” or “Mo,” blissfully settled into life in the Barger’s mother-in-law suite. He is a constant companion to Mary. They go for afternoon walks when the weather is fine, and spend contented hours in her favorite chair, an antique rocker that, in truth, isn’t ideally suited for snuggling. “No matter,” says Barger. “Mo perches in her lap, legs dangling, happy as a clam.

  “Now the best time of the afternoon is naptime, snuggled up with his new mom,” says Barger. “He is well aware of his new mission—to take care of Mom—and he does.”

  Mary Palmer and Mojo met on a fateful flight in 2010. They’ve been constant companions ever since.

  Though Mo had clearly won Mary’s heart, he was long denied his most persistent request—to share her bed at night. Mary held out for months, but eventually, the persuasive dachshund wore her down. As she learned on that fateful flight along the Florida coast, the little guy is hard to resist.

  A Sweet Southern Girl

  NAME: Eyelet (and pups)

  BREED: Beagle mix

  AGE: Three years

  TOTAL MILEAGE:

  529

  ROUTE:

  Helena, Alabama–Brewton, Alabama*

  Brewton, Alabama–Tampa, Florida

  * Ground (car) transport leg

  Sixteen-year-old Sawyer Thompson and a friend were out exploring in the woods a few miles from home in Helena, Alabama. As they kicked through the fallen leaves on a November day, the boys’ casual conversation came to an abrupt stop. Before them on the ground, on a bed of leaves and litter, lay a small brown dog—a beagle mix—nursing six tiny puppies. They moved in for a closer look, and their initial excitement turned to dismay. “The babies’ condition was good,” Thompson recalls, “but the mother’s was awful. She was skinny and covered with sores.”

  When the dog who would later be called Eyelet was discovered in rural Alabama, she was starving yet continuing to nurse her six puppies.

  The dog wasn’t a stray, Thompson knew. In fact, he knew who her owner was. He also knew that the animals’ lives were in real danger if he didn’t do something. He went to the owner’s house, “a shack built in the 1800s,” and asked if he could take the dogs somewhere safe. “He was kinda iffy at first, but then I told him I would find them good homes,” says Thompson, “and he said OK.”

  For the previous two years, Thompson had volunteered at a local animal rescue, so he knew what to do. He and his friend carefully loaded the frightened animals into his truck and drove them to the home of Sonya Smith.

  Smith is the founder and director of Two by Two Rescue, the small volunteer organization in Helena where Thompson had often donated his time. Seeing the emaciated mother dog for the first time, Smith immediately dubbed her “Eyelet,” an admittedly unusual name that she goes on to explain.

  “I am a southern girl and so is thi
s sweet dog!” says Smith, in a voice fairly dripping Tupelo honey. “My grandmother and mother taught me to sew as a child and one of my favorite cloths was eyelet—a fabric or notion that is very feminine and used a lot in the South. When I first laid eyes on the little beagle momma, she had such a sweet feminine quality to her that I knew she needed a name that communicated that characteristic. Within seconds I thought of Eyelet.”

  Smith cleaned the puppies up and began tending to Eyelet. She was clearly not well, but the “southern girl” gratefully accepted food and water. Smith’s next step was to find help—and a home—for this ragged clan. She posted an urgent SOS to the rescue community. The dogs would all need vetting and, until they could be placed in forever homes, foster care.