On February 21st, at 2pm, privately owned small airplanes flew their own mercy mission, bringing 15 dogs targeted for euthanasia in South Carolina to Orange County airport and ultimately to sanctuary at Pets Alive.
All of these dogs were rescued from kennels where they were among as many as 250 dogs to be put to death this week alone in just ONE shelter in South Carolina. Every one of them was scheduled to die this morning. Many of the shelters there have as high as a 99 percent kill rate. Instead of being put into the gas chamber, they were whisked away and transported by ground from South Carolina to North Carolina where the pilots loaded them aboard and flew them to safety.
A group of local Pets Alive volunteers met the pooches at the airport and brought them to our shelter where we examined them, checked them into runs with good food, a warm Kuranda bed and fresh water and we started to prepare them for adoption.
Another 10 dogs are being driven to Pets Alive on Sunday as part of the continuing rescue effort.
All of these dogs are young, highly adoptable and friendly. It was a great day. Planes coming out of the air, all of them with dogs on board that would have been dead today. (Please consider adopting a homeless animal).
Special thanks to all our volunteers for going out to the airport on almost no notice, waiting around for over an hour and a half because of transport delays and then bringing these wonderful dogs back to our shelter. Thank you to Rhonda Sims and Freedom Train Transport for coordinating, Kerri our adoption coordinator for making it all go smoothly and to AnimalRescueFlights.org and Pilots-N-Paws for helping to save all of these dogs. Every pilot donated his time, fuel expense, their own plane and their love and compassion to make it all happen.
We can’t thank you all enough. Click here to see photos of the arrival. Thank you to Becky Tegze for the photos.

Thank you so much to our FABULOUS volunteers! Lisamarie, Lorraine, Eileen, Frank, Suzy, Sarah, Michael, Dina, Alyssa, Jo, Paula, Jan, Alina, Richard, John, Betty and Yvonne. We had hours to pull this together and we were so grateful for you all to leaving everything to rush down there and help. THANK YOU!