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

by Patrick Regan

  In the summer of 2009, Suzanne Bruner was a college student living with her grandparents near the dog’s former home. She first saw the forsaken dog while collecting eggs from a neighbor’s chicken coop. She listened, horrified, as the neighbor related the dog’s sorry story. She learned that it had been more than a month since its owners had moved on. The dog watched warily from the edge of the woods. Even from a distance, Bruner could see that it was emaciated and covered with cuts and contusions, including a broad patch of completely raw “road rash” across its side and hind leg.

  In the rural community where opinions about the “nuisance” dog ran from chilly indifference to outright disdain, Suzanne felt something else: compassion. The dog wouldn’t come to her, but she approached her slowly, quietly reassuring her. “Have you ever seen a dog in complete shut-down mode?” she asks. “Crouched down, shaking, absolutely terrified. . . .”

  Eventually, the dog let Bruner near. The young woman picked her up and put her into her aunt’s car. “Honestly, I didn’t have a game plan,” she says. “I just knew I had to get her out of there.”

  Once home, she tied the dog to a rusty horse trailer in the shade of a tree in her grandparents’ yard. Her grandfather may have admired his granddaughter’s heart, but he wasn’t willing to let the dog stay permanently or to come inside the house.

  “If there had been any way possible, I would have done anything to keep Phoenix. But I’m a college student. I work and live with someone who will not allow dogs in the house. She needed to be inside . . . with a family.”

  —Suzanne Bruner

  For the next few weeks, Bruner tended to the dog the best she could. She fed her and tried to keep her wounds clean while they healed. She removed more ticks than she could count. Her means were limited, so mostly she worked on the dog’s fragile emotional state. “I worked to get her where she wasn’t so nervous around people,” Bruner says. She also gave the dog a name. In optimistic anticipation of the new life she imagined for her, she christened the dog “Phoenix.”

  Bruner had suspected early on that Phoenix was pregnant. As the weeks went by, she became sure. She knew in her heart that the dog she had grown to love needed more help than she could provide.

  She tried a nearby Doberman rescue first but they couldn’t take Phoenix. Through Internet posts she cast a wider net. Eventually, her desperate plea reached Alla McGeary, a volunteer with the Doberman Assistance Network (DAN) based in Winchester, Virginia.

  Learning that the dog was pregnant but not knowing how far along, McGeary told Suzanne that they would need to act fast. “Get the dog cleaned up and get it a collar,” she told Suzanne, then the experienced rescue coordinator set to work finding the dog a foster home.

  McGeary worked her contact list hard. When various rescue groups hedged on whether they could take the dog or not, she admits to being curt. “My response was, ‘I need an answer now—if we don’t move on this, she is gonna have puppies under the tree.’”

  Teka Clark of Northcoast Doberman Rescue, a small, independent rescue in Lancaster, Ohio, answered McGeary’s call. “I can take her,” said Clark. “Just get her here fast.”

  McGeary had plenty of experience with PNP animal transports. Now that she had a flight path—from eastern Mississippi to central Ohio—she set to work looking for pilots. The first to sign on for a transport leg was a man familiar to animal rescues in the Southeast—pilot Jim Carney, one of PNP’s most prolific animal movers. When the urgency of the mission made finding additional pilots difficult, Carney told McGeary that if she could get the dog to Tupelo, he would fly her all the way to Teka Clark in Ohio.

  Pilot Jim Carney flew the very pregnant Phoenix all the way from Tupelo, Mississippi, to Ohio.

  Suzanne Bruner was amazed at how quickly things happened once McGeary took on Phoenix’s cause. The student had never heard of Pilots N Paws before. When she learned from McGeary that Phoenix would be flying on a private plane from Mississippi to Ohio, she was flat-out astonished. “I thought that was the most awesome thing I’d ever heard,” she says.

  “I’m very happy that she found someone who was actually worthy of her. It kind of killed me a little to give her up because she was the most amazing dog I’ve ever known.”

  —Suzanne Bruner

  With little time to spare, the flight came off just three days later. Phoenix had started producing milk—usually a sign that whelping would occur within a week. Suzanne and her grandfather drove the dog two hours to Tupelo where they met rescue volunteer Kerry Panell. Panell kept Phoenix overnight and drove her to the airport the next morning in time to meet Carney, who had flown in from his home airport in Tennessee.

  “Jim’s only concern was, ‘Are you sure she won’t be delivering while I’m flying?’” says McGeary with a laugh. “Of course, we had no way of knowing for sure, but thought—and hoped—we still had a day or two.” The flight, according to Carney, “was a nonevent.” In pilot-speak, that’s a good thing. For all she’d been through, Phoenix handled the unusual circumstances with aplomb, easily settling into the backseat of Carney’s plane. “I’d reach back and pet her, and she would just kind of melt in my hand back there,” Carney remembers. “She would just very gently touch my hand with her nose or give a little soft lick, like she was saying, ‘Thanks for getting me out of that mess.’”

  “It’s quite a feeling to see the plane land and the dogs come off. They’re so excited and the pilots are all grinning. . . . It’s so much easier on the dogs, so less stressful. It’s an amazing, wonderful program.”

  —Teka Clark, Northcoast Doberman Rescue

  A few days after arriving at Clark’s rescue, Phoenix delivered nine puppies—“all healthy and happy and good,” she reported to Phoenix’s growing list of supporters. After the pups were weaned, Phoenix started on heartworm meds, and Clark posted the pups and their mother on her site—available for adoption. The progeny of Phoenix now enjoy comfortable lives in Chicago, Virginia, Baltimore, Michigan, and Ohio. “People read about their mom on our Web site,” says Clark, “and everybody wanted a Phoenix puppy.”

  Safe on the ground in Ohio (pictured with Teka Clark and Angie Austin), Phoenix delivered nine healthy pups a few days later.

  Adopting out adorable puppies is generally not a problem. Placing a six-year-old heartworms survivor with a checkered past is more of a challenge. Clark received some inquiries, but she had a particular type of home in mind for this special dog. “We waited for the right match,” she says, “and after about six weeks, we hit the jackpot.”

  Phoenix and Kate—two cast-off animals who have become constant companions at their new home in upstate New York.

  A woman named Roxie put in an application. She lived on a horse farm in upstate New York with another rescued dog and several miniature ponies—also rescued. She’d read Phoenix’s story and been touched. She’d seen Phoenix’s picture and fallen in love.

  Teka Clark arranged for a rescue colleague to make a site visit to the prospective adoptive home to assess its suitability. It was just as ideal as it sounded. A few weeks later, Phoenix’s new mom, Roxie, drove from New York to Ohio to claim her new forever dog. Now, as unlikely as it sounds, the dog once tied to a rusty horse trailer in rural Mississippi—abandoned, pregnant, and terrified—has acres to roam and, yes, a pony of her own. Phoenix has indeed risen, ably assisted by a host of angels.

  “The PNP pilots are unbelievable. Every single time I’ve had pilots move a dog, they have bent over backward to help. I’ve had these guys fly at the drop of a hat to move these dogs. I’ve had them volunteer to hold dogs if we couldn’t coordinate something with another pilot to come in. I can’t say enough about them. They’re animal people, and they are unbelievable.”

  —Alla McGeary, rescue coordinator

  A Moving Story

  NAME: Angel

  BREED: Mutt

  AGE: Unknown

  TOTAL MILEAGE:

  949

  ROUTE:

  T
opeka, Kansas–Kansas City, Missouri

  Kansas City, Missouri–Carbondale, Illinois

  Carbondale, Illinois–Charlottesville, Virginia

  Kansas-based pilot Sarah Owens flew her first PNP passenger—a cat named Seymour—in early 2009. “After that trip,” she says, “I was hooked! Pilots N Paws has become an addiction. I absolutely love it!”

  Owens has flown around twenty missions since then, each with its own rewards and its own story. One of her favorites involved a family in need and a cross-country move.

  In April 2009, I saw a post on the PNP Web site from a family in Marysville, Kansas. They were on a very tight budget and had to move to Virginia. They did not drive and would have to move via Greyhound. They could not afford to pay for transportation for their dog, Angel, and desperately wanted to take her with them.

  It just happened that I was planning another PNP flight with another pilot, Karen, who offered to take Angel east, toward Virginia, after our previously scheduled flight. I offered to fly to Topeka and pick up Angel. When I got to Topeka, I met Angel’s owners, who seemed very nervous about my “little airplane.” I think they were skeptical that this thing would actually fly.

  George, Angel’s owner, was trying to be very stoic, but I could tell that this was hard for him, having to release his dog to a stranger and trust that everything would work out for transportation all the way to Virginia.

  After some good-byes, I asked George and his wife, Cari, to help me load Angel in the plane. At this time, he just lost it. This man was so emotional about losing his dog, it just killed me. Good thing I was wearing sunglasses, because he was turning me into mush! I was practically a bawling baby as I taxied for takeoff—trying to hide my sniffles between communications with the air traffic control tower. I promised to take care of their precious cargo and call them as soon as we got to Kansas City, where I would be fostering the dog for one night, before its next flight. The flight was uneventful, and Angel was a great passenger. The next day, she flew with Karen, and made it back to George in Virginia within a few days. He was so thankful and sent me a very nice e-mail with pictures. It was such a great feeling to know that I was able to reunite this family.”

  Kansas-based PNP pilot Sarah Owens with Angel.

  All Species Airways

  The vast majority of animals rescued with the assistance of Pilots N Paws are dogs, but it’s not unusual for pilots to transport cats now and then, and the odd rabbit occasionally benefits from PNP air transport, as well.

  But as far as species variety is concerned, it’s unlikely that any PNP pilot could match the collective flight manifest of Key West–based pilot Jeff Bennett.

  In his first two years of flying PNP missions, Bennett has earned a reputation for being up for just about anything. Among the more than five hundred animals he’s flown, there have certainly been dogs—lots of dogs (he’s flown as many as twenty-three at a time in his Cirrus SR22)—but also rabbits, rats, guinea pigs, iguanas, a pot-bellied pig named Mo, and several very large snakes. Burmese pythons are something of a specialty.

  “No one wants to fly snakes,” the genial Bennett says incredulously. “I love to fly them! They’re cold-blooded, and it gets hot in the plane, so you’ve got this great neck cooler, and they’ve got a warm rock to curl up around.”

  Self-deprecation is default mode for Bennett, so it’s no surprise that he refers to his head as a warm rock. He’s also frank, as many PNP pilots are, about the service they provide. “We [pilots] get a lot of notoriety for flying the dogs, but I gotta tell you, I’m just the bus,” he says. “We get these animals after they’ve already been taken care of and nursed back to health. What the rescue volunteers and people on the ground deal with is the real work—their commitment and passion are just unbelievable.”

  Among the menagerie flown by PNP pilot Jeff Bennett, one of his favorite passengers was Mo, the pig. “The most dramatic part was loading him into the crate. Pigs scream when their feet leave the ground,” says Bennett, “but once he was in the crate he was fine.”

  Honorable Discharge

  Names: Fritz and Derrick

  BREED: German shepherds

  AGE: Mature

  TOTAL MILEAGE:

  1,432

  ROUTE:

  San Antonio, Texas–Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

  For Fritz and Derrick, long active-duty careers had come to an end. The two German shepherds, both military working dogs stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, were retiring. Both suffered poor health—Derrick was battling an aggressive form of cancer, while Fritz struggled with a degenerative neurological disorder.

  Neither Derrick nor Fritz could be cured of their conditions, but through the efforts of the Austin German Shepherd Dog Rescue and several compassionate individuals, their final months would find them surrounded by love and honored for their service to our nation.

  Todd Johnson is a volunteer with AGSDR and a pilot who has flown several missions for Pilots N Paws. When he heard that both dogs had been offered adoptive homes in Pennsylvania, he was determined to get them there. Knowing he couldn’t make the cross-country trek alone, he posted a transport request to the PNP Web site. He planned to fly the first leg to Dallas and hoped other pilots would sign on to complete the transport.

  Bottom: On the ground in San Antonio, Texas, Kim AmRhein, Gina Helm, and PNP pilot Todd Johnson prepare to load Fritz for the flight to Pennsylvania. AmRhein is the San Antonio coordinator for Austin German Shepherd Rescue. Two San Antonio Airport Police K9 officers also stopped by to pay their respects to the retired military service dogs.

  The first response to his post left Johnson flabbergasted. Margo Walker, a businesswoman based in New York City, responded with an offer to send a Hawker 800 business jet to San Antonio to pick up the dogs and take them anywhere they needed to go. Five days later, the plane arrived in San Antonio with two pilots and an in-flight caretaker for the warrior dogs.

  In just a few hours, the jet covered the 1,500-mile route that would have normally required several transfers and at least a full day of flying. In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Derrick and Fritz were greeted by their new families, their working days through and their every need attended to.

  Within a few months of arriving at their new homes, both Derrick and Fritz succumbed to their ailments, but they did receive a final tribute to their service before passing away. On November 11, 2010, Fritz and Derrick were honored on the floor of the Pennsylvania legislature. It was, after all, Veterans Day.

  After serving more than a decade each in the U.S. military, Fritz (left and upper right with owner Jennifer Cox) and Derrick (lower right) lived out their lives as civilians in Pennsylvania.

  “He was such a great dog, and my heart still breaks because we had such a short time with him. But I would do it all over again even knowing that we’d only have three months with him.”

  —Jennifer Cox, Fritz’s adoptive owner

  Ernie’s Journey

  NAME: Ernie

  BREED: Dachshund

  AGE: Seven years

  TOTAL MILEAGE:

  316

  ROUTE:

  Jacksonville, North Carolina–Wilmington, North Carolina*

  Wilmington, North Carolina–Loris, South Carolina*

  Loris, South Carolina–Savannah, Georgia

  * Ground (car) transport leg

  Ernie was down and very nearly out. As a senior dog, surrendered to a high-kill county animal-control shelter in North Carolina, his prospects did not look rosy. It didn’t help that shelter personnel labeled Ernie as aggressive. He was scheduled for euthanasia.

  But Tiffeny Yohman, a Jacksonville, North Carolina, animal rescuer and former shelter employee, suspected Ernie might have got a bum rap. “Dachshunds are notorious for being fear-aggressive,” explains Yohman. “In a shelter environment, they are terrified times ten.”

  Yohman had learned of Ernie through friends at the shelter. Aware of her passion and extensive network of contacts in t
he rescue community, the director and staff often call Yohman when they have a dog that’s run out of options.

  Yohman went immediately to work, sending e-mail blasts relating Ernie’s plight to her rescue contacts. Three hundred miles away in Savannah, Georgia, she made the connection that would turn the tide for Ernie. Terry Wolf of Southern Comfort Animal Rescue was willing to take Ernie and committed to finding him a new home.

  With a destination set, Operation Ernie’s Journey went into action. It would take a diverse group of rescuers, fosters, and transporters to move Ernie down the southeast Atlantic coast—a group assembled by Wolf and rescue coordinator Charity Merrill. “Most rescue individuals are on chat lines or Yahoo! Groups, and we crosspost the devil out of dogs in need of rescue,” says Merrill. Among her many posts was one to the Pilots N Paws board, requesting transport to Georgia.