On October 24, a plane touched down at Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling, then took off again 30 minutes later. What happened in that half hour was nothing short of lifesaving.
Staff members from five different animal welfare organizations, including Anderson Humane, converged on the plane, unloading a few dozen crates and carefully placing them in rows on the tarmac before the plane departed.
Each crate was labeled with the name of a local animal organization and the name of the precious cargo inside, a dog or cat transported from a shelter in Texas that was over capacity. The air transport was done through a partnership between Petco Love and Dog Is My Copilot.
“Petco Love reached out to us a few days before the transport,” said Dean Daubert, our Chief Operations Officer, adding that Anderson Humane has had a partnership with Petco Love for close to a decade. “These animals needed homes and faced a high likelihood of euthanasia if other shelters, like ours, weren’t able to help.”
Anderson Humane received three dogs, who soon became twenty. Two of the dogs, Lil Mama and Shelley, were pregnant, and immediately went into loving foster homes. Lil Mama gave birth first, to an impressive litter of nine puppies.
Shelley’s foster, who grew concerned when Shelley started looking more like a hippo than a dog, brought her to our vet, Dr. Rachel Kantola, who performed a cesarean section to deliver eight healthy puppies.
All 17 puppies and their mamas are being showered with love in their foster homes. Once the pups are weaned, they’ll be available for adoption. The moms will be available for adoption soon after that.
The third dog we received, Lil Dude, was immediately placed into foster care and scheduled for his neuter surgery. While he was still recovering from his surgery, he got adopted into his forever home.
In addition to this transport, Petco Love has supported Anderson Humane with grants, educational opportunities, and lost pet assistance for all our adoptable animals through their Petco Love Lost program. They also donated 100 crates to us prior to our transports of the beagles rescued from Envigo, allowing us to accept more dogs than we would have been able to help otherwise.
This is our first time working with Dog Is My Copilot, an organization that transports animals from overcrowded shelters to those with more room, but hopefully not the last. We were also pleased to work alongside the other local shelters who took in the rest of the transported animals.
“As an organization, we want to encourage and promote inter-shelter cooperation whenever possible,” said Dean. We all win when we work together – especially vulnerable animals like Lil Dude, Lil Mama, and Shelley, as well as those who will be giving these dogs and their pups forever homes.
Check out all our rescues currently awaiting their forever home.