April 14, 2022 - Rescue Mission #8

783 miles

I imagine in the evening hours the seven puppies that were delivered to their foster home were snug under warm blankets with full bellies dreaming of bouncing balls, mud filled puddles, and belly rubs. They could not have known the Herculean efforts to get them out of the shelter where the possibility of never leaving are ever present. Only five weeks old, they had not even gotten their first shots and now they were earning their first flight wings!

Rewind a week prior, we had it all set. Isaac had a plane reserved, flight path calculated from Victorville to Fresno. Everything was a Go! And then it wasn’t. As quickly as my dog can inhale a biscuit is about as quickly as a plane can get grounded. Minor details, something about the fuel not going to the engine and the plane turning into a glider. You don’t even need to be familiar with airplanes to know that no fuel is NO BUENO!!! The thing is, we don’t own a plane, so not like we can just take off. No, we have to rent a plane (and no, NOT through Enterprise!) In order to rent a plane, you need to be “checked out” on that plane by an approved certified flight instructor (CFI). The planes that were available he couldn’t check out, so we had to tap out. We couldn’t do the trip. Someone else was on the back burner and we hoped they could step in to help. We waited…. And waited…. Nothing. Everyone else bailed. Days passed and the puppies were no closer to their foster home. Then the emails started back again. Followed by no less than 289 texts. Days were spent in communication with all parties as the dance of drop off, take off, land, hand over played out. Busy lives with work schedules and conflict, but finally on what seemed to be the 1000th message, everything was set again. Another plane became available. Everyone’s schedule was cleared and mission was a GO!!! Until it wasn’t, AGAIN! The scheduled plane was grounded on the way to the airport for an Airworthiness Directive (AD).  You don’t mess with ADs because they HAVE to get done!  However, a last minute scramble and another plane was secured while at the airport! 

Take-off finally happened on the morning of April 14th. The short trip from Montgomery Field to Victorville is about an hour, where Isaac greeted the puppies with kisses, pets, and puppy breath (to be clear it wasn’t Isaac that had the puppy breath). Everyone got safely onboard rooming together in one large kennel. As the plane took off, there were curious yips and long gazes into the blue sky. They finally settled into a cuddle puddle and to a nap for the quick hop from Victorville to Fresno. 

The puppies will be with Imagine Peace for Pups rescue, where they will get all their vet updates and eventually be available for adoption. It may not seem like much, but for those seven puppies, it’s everything.

We’d like to thank all of you who supported our plant sales and contributed to our flight fund.  We’d like to thank the volunteers at Pilots N Paws. We simply couldn’t have done this without you! 

If you would like to help contribute to this rescue mission or any future ones, please go to our flight fund donations page HERE to donate (and THANK YOU!!).

We just wanna plant stuff & rescue dogs.

oxoxo

Sonja & Isaac