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

by Patrick Regan

  PNP pilot Brett Grooms (r) with Mallory Corder and a canine passenger.

  Volunteer in-flight animal wrangler Gina Austin does backseat duty for PNP pilot Jim Carney.

  PNP pilot Mark Kozak with rambunctious cargo.

  Since the beginning, that’s essentially how PNP has worked. Animal rescuers post the details of their transport requests on the PNP Ride Board (what Wehrenberg refers to as the “bulletin board”), including vital information such as departure and arrival cities, size of dog, special needs, etc.

  Pilots who’ve signed up as PNP volunteers are asked to check the board regularly to see if there’s a flight—or one leg of a multileg transport—that they are able and willing to take on. If a pilot sees a “doable” flight, he or she contacts the rescue poster directly and details are worked out between both parties. There is no central command. No set schedule. No minimum commitment for pilots. And no distance limit—although the average for any single flight is usually around 300 nautical miles (roughly 350 ground miles).

  One other thing: There are no fees. Pilots donate their time, their aircraft, and their fuel expenses for every mission they take on. Because Pilots N Paws has been set up as a registered 501(c)(3) charity, this is nonnegotiable. “We can’t accept money. We can’t accept any kind of gratuity. We can’t even accept lunch from a rescue,” says Wehrenberg. Pilots can, if they choose to, file their expenses as a charitable donation. “That’s frosting on the cake,” says Wehrenberg. “It’s not why the pilot is doing it, but if he’s going to be doing it, at least he gets a little benefit out of it.”

  In a very real way, Wehrenberg was the “test pilot” for PNP. One of his first challenges in that capacity was convincing a skeptical rescue community that his offer to fly rescue dogs was genuine and free of hidden motives. Subsequent to flying Debi Boies’s Doberman, he had flown several other transports for the Doberman Assistance Network—all of them set up by Boies, and all of them successful. But he found that when he tried to “fly solo” and set up a transport without Boies’s express endorsement, he met with resistance.

  “I responded to a posting on Yahoo! for a [ground] transport from Chattanooga to Jamestown, New York,” he says. “It was a two-day transport with at least a dozen legs. I went on the forum and said, ‘Hey, I’ll do the whole thing in my plane.’” The response was underwhelming. “Dead silence,” he recalls. “So I communicated directly with the coordinator, and assured her that I would do in 2¾ hours what was going to take two days. Still no embracing of the concept. They just couldn’t accept that I didn’t have an ulterior motive.”

  “The concept” was no doubt radical to the person setting up the transport. Maybe it all seemed too easy. “Maybe,” jokes Boies, “they thought we were puppy thieves.”

  Wehrenberg persisted. “I never had to work so hard to get folks to agree to let me do a transport,” he says. “I finally convinced her by telling her that I did, in fact, have an ulterior motive. I grew up in Jamestown, New York, and my daughter lives there. I told the coordinator that I wanted to do the transport not only because it would save the pups (there were four), but because I could have lunch with Wendi. Apparently that convinced her that I wasn’t going to steal the dogs.”

  The transport came off without a hitch. “It gave me credibility, because I now had references,” says Wehrenberg, “and it proved to my satisfaction that we as pilots could easily do what rescuers were trying, not always successfully, to do with cars. We had to gain the trust of rescues, and that first flight without Debi’s involvement was the breakthrough. It was like knocking over the first domino. After that one came off, I knew that PNP was a go.”

  “I’ve flown as many as seventeen animals at one time in my plane. It stinks like a barn after doing that . . . but I don’t care, because that’s seventeen animals that ain’t gonna get euthanized.”

  —Jon Wehrenberg

  Having won the trust of animal-rescue coordinators and built a rudimentary online forum for pilots and rescues, Boies and Wehrenberg moved on to their next challenge—attracting pilots. “Neither Jon nor I ever worried that we’d have a shortage of transport requests,” says Boies, “but we did spend a lot of time talking about how to spread the word to pilots.”

  PNP cofounder Jon Weherenberg and passenger.

  PNP cofounder Debi Boies.

  The two turned to the old-fashioned local media to get their story out. Wehrenberg had a friend who worked as a columnist for his hometown newspaper in Knoxville. He told him about PNP and the journalist (also an animal lover) was interested. But Wehrenberg wanted to make sure that they didn’t end up with a piddling public-interest story buried somewhere on page twelve. “He worked with me and told me how to get the editor of the paper to do a story of substantial prominence,” says Wehrenberg. “We worked on it for about three months and ultimately succeeded in getting the Knoxville News Sentinel to do an extremely large Sunday feature story on PNP. They sent a reporter on a transport with a pilot. They spoke to animal-rescue volunteers. They shot a video to accompany the story. And that laid the foundation for all the media coverage that would follow.”

  USA Today picked up on the story, also shooting a video segment to go along with a full page of print coverage. That opened the national-media floodgates. In ensuing months, in addition to countless stories on local network affiliates and in local newspapers large and small, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, World News Tonight with Charles Gibson, Fox News, CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, and ABC’s Good Morning America all filmed and aired PNP stories. The story of death-row dogs bound for better homes via small aircraft proved to be irresistible to the press.

  To augment this surprising media juggernaut, Boies and Wehrenberg also reached out to pilots “where they live,” manning a booth at air shows, posting notices in GA publications, and leaving promotional fliers in GA airports.

  Word-of-mouth referrals were probably the best promotional tool of all. Pilots talk to pilots—in online forums, through aero club events, and just hanging around at America’s thousands of small airfields. Pilots N Paws began as a curiosity, and fairly quickly became a not-so-unusual topic of pilot conversation.

  Kansas-based pilot Sarah Owens learned about PNP from an article in an aviation magazine. “I had obtained my private pilot’s license a year and a half earlier, and wanted to do something more than fly for the ‘hundred dollar hamburger,’” she says, employing a term common among pilots. When pilots want to take a short flight—to log hours, to practice, or just for fun—they will sometimes fly in to a small airport, fifty to one hundred miles away, have lunch, and fly home. The fuel cost for such pleasure flights (these days well over $100) inspired the colorful idiom. Pete Howell, a PNP volunteer based in St. Paul, Minnesota, uses a different colloquialism to describe flying for flying’s sake. “‘Boring holes in the sky,’ is what some people call it,” says Howell. “It’s much nicer to have a mission.”

  PNP pilot Sarah Owens loads up eight Lab puppies in Lawrence, Kansas. Rescue volunteer Rhonda Schademann helps ride herd.

  As Owens, Howell, and hundreds of others signed up for PNP transports, it became clear that Jon Wehrenberg’s instincts about pilots’ willingness to get involved were dead on.

  “I’ve noticed that airplane guys are typically dog guys, too.”

  —Pete Howell, PNP pilot

  By the end of 2011—after nearly four years and countless hours of hard work by Boies and Wehrenberg—more than two thousand pilots were registered with Pilots N Paws.

  Mission accomplished? Not by a long shot, according to the founders. “Our goal is to get ten thousand pilots,” says Boies. “We want enough pilots so that no request goes unanswered. There are between three hundred and four hundred thousand general-aviation pilots in this country, so if we can get just 3 or 4 percent, we’re there.”

  As in any organization, levels of involvement vary. For some pilots, financial constraints and busy schedules allow only occasional rescue flights
. Others have enthusiastically become the “heavy lifters” of airborne animal transport. (Wehrenberg is among them. He celebrated transporting his five hundredth dog in the summer of 2010.) Most pilots fall somewhere in between—flying a rescue mission every few weeks or once a month. But no matter how often they fly, PNP pilots are universally enthusiastic about the rewards.

  PNP pilot Ron Lee preps for takeoff.

  A sign in the window of PNP pilot Rhonda Mills’s plane.

  Jeff Bennett is a semiretired businessman based in the Florida Keys. At this point, he isn’t sure exactly how many PNP missions he’s flown, but in the spring of 2011, he transported his five hundredth “critter.” “I’ve learned that there are two types of transports,” Bennett says. “You have transports where you’re taking a dog out of a kill shelter and flying him to a rescue. In those cases, it’s a personal thing, because you’re not dealing with anybody except the shelters and rescues, and you know for a fact that you’re saving these dogs’ lives. The other kind is where you fly a dog to an adoptive home and you get to see the joy on people’s faces when they receive their new family member, so each one has its own reward.” He then adds, “I gotta admit, even though it’s great seeing people with their new family member, I think moving them out of kill shelters is probably more rewarding to me.”

  “These dogs know—I mean they absolutely know—that they’re being rescued. Don’t ask me how. Every rescue I’ve spoken to about this has agreed with me that somehow the animals know that when they’re pulled from a shelter, and put on a plane and delivered to another rescue, their whole attitude changes, as though they know they don’t have to be scared anymore. They’re going to be safe. I can’t explain it, but it’s like they sense that everything is going to be okay.”

  —Jon Wehrenberg

  There are less obvious rewards, too. For some pilots, the best part of PNP is meeting and working with their collaborators in the animal-rescue community.

  PNP pilot Patrick Lofvenholm with passenger Rommel.

  “Pilots definitely build personal relationships with our ground counterparts, and that to me is one of the most interesting things that PNP has been able to accomplish,” says South Carolina–based pilot Brett Grooms. “It has brought thousands of people from varying backgrounds together to help our furry friends, but along the way it’s also unknowingly created lifelong friendships among a diverse group of people who might otherwise never have met.”

  For thousands of volunteers on the rescue side, working with PNP has given them insight into a subculture that they would likely never have otherwise seen. “There’s a stereotype of people with planes,” says Boies. “For a lot of us it’s a somewhat mysterious culture. People assume they’re all wealthy. That’s actually far from the truth. They are people united by a common love of aviation. For people who feel that desire deeply enough, they’ll find a way to fly.”

  Robin Lee perfectly fits that description. Lee is a general-aviation pilot in Seattle. She doesn’t own her own plane, but when she signs on for a PNP mission, she rents one for a day. Lee works three different jobs (all in the aviation field), partially to fund her love of flying. “My passions are aviation and animals,” she says. “[Renting a plane] to help dogs in need is worth every penny to me.”

  Mike Gannon is a PNP pilot based in the sparsely populated northwestern corner of Kansas. A former air traffic controller, Gannon bought a 1969 Cessna a few years ago when his brother, living back on the family farm in Vermont, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He uses the plane to make trips back east to visit. “It’s three hard days by pickup truck or nine hours in that Cessna,” says Gannon in a deep, gruff voice. “So that’s generally what I use it for.” He never makes the trip without first checking the PNP transport board to see if a rescue dog needs a ride east. He also frequently shuttles dogs through what he calls “a dead zone” for rescue flights between central Kansas and Colorado’s Front Range. All kinds of people fly planes for all kinds of reasons. Pilots N Paws provides them with a very compelling one.

  When the airplane was invented, it shrunk the world. Airplanes still do that. When PNP was founded, it brought two worlds together. Preconceived notions are laid to rest as pilots and rescuers come together, unified in their mission to save animals. Since early 2008, that germ of an idea—to bring private pilots and animal rescuers together—has grown into an “organization” like no other.

  Small aircraft have been around for more than a hundred years now, but it’s still the rare person who doesn’t take notice when a small propeller plane passes overhead. Hearing the faint thrum of an engine, we instinctively turn our eyes skyward to search out that tiny white cross moving slowly across the ocean of blue. We are transported for just a moment, caught up in the mystery. Who’s up there? Where are they going?

  We on the ground never know for sure. But the next time you look up to see a small plane tracking across the sky, keep in mind that there may well be a pair of curious and hope-filled eyes looking out that plane’s window—eyes that don’t belong to the person flying the plane. A passenger of an entirely different sort may be gazing out and seeing for the first time the broad expanse of Earth unfolding below, and imagining a new life far from the one left behind.

  Behind every flight, there’s a story. . . .

  PART THREE

  Flight Tales

  Cassidy Rides Again

  NAME: Hobble Along Cassidy

  BREED: Labrador mix

  AGE: One year

  TOTAL MILEAGE:

  1,075

  ROUTE:

  Salida, Colorado–Albuquerque, New Mexico

  Albuquerque, New Mexico–Columbia, Missouri

  In the Navajo Nation, stray and abandoned dogs are so common as to be part of the landscape. As an educational audiologist for the Bureau of Indian Education, Mary Vitt regularly visits schools all across the vast Eastern Navajo Reservation. She sees “rez dogs” everywhere she goes. “They’re usually skin and bones,” she says.

  At her home in Crownpoint, New Mexico, Vitt keeps a binder full of pictures of the dogs—and a few cats—she’s picked up, fostered, and helped place in homes over her ten years on the job. She worries over the ones she hasn’t been able to help. Near one of her schools there’s an abandoned graffiti-covered building with a large hole in one wall. A group of strays moves in and out, using the building for shelter. Vitt and a colleague regularly leave piles of dry food for the pack, which she affectionately calls the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang.

  Mary Vitt has rescued dozens of strays on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico. She found Hobble Along Cassidy scared, skittish, and injured in 2010.

  In the spring of 2010, Vitt spotted a new member among the motley assortment of dogs—a young yellow Lab mix. Obviously injured, the small dog “kind of scooted to get around,” says Vitt. Scared and skittish, she kept a wary distance from the pack and from Vitt, but with help from a friend the veteran rescuer was able to scoop up the injured dog in a blanket. She took her home and cared for her the best she could while she looked for help. She named the gimpy dog Hobble Along Cassidy.

  A local vet examined the pup and offered amputation as the only option for its badly damaged front leg. But Vitt wasn’t ready to accept such a drastic solution. She knew it would make finding a permanent home for Cassidy all the more difficult. Through online networking, Vitt found a veterinarian in Missouri who was willing to perform the complicated surgery needed to save the dog’s leg at a greatly reduced cost. A New Mexico–based rescue, Luvin’ Labs, helped Vitt with fundraising for the surgery, but a commercial flight to Missouri was too expensive for Vitt or the rescue to cover.

  Vitt discovered Pilots N Paws while doing an Internet search for animal transport. She’d never heard of the group before but wrote up a post requesting transport to Missouri and crossed her fingers. “I really didn’t expect a response,” she remembers.

  Top: Cassidy rests after her initial vet exam in New Mexico. Above: Colorado-base
d pilots Greg and Sharon Gempler flew Cassidy all the way from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Columbia, Missouri.

  A few days later, hope for Hobble Along Cassidy arrived in the form of a phone call from Sharon Gempler, who, along with her husband, Greg, volunteered to fly from their home in central Colorado to pick up the injured dog and fly her all the way from Albuquerque to Columbia, Missouri—a total distance of more than 1,800 air miles. Vitt was dumbfounded. Of the Gemplers she simply says, “They are awesome people.”

  After several reschedules and a near scrub because of inclement weather, the trip came off a few days later. On the ground in Columbia, Dr. James (“Jimi”) Cook and his staff at the University of Missouri Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital took over. Examining the patient, they discovered all her toes on one foot were broken and a different leg was fractured.

  The surgery was long and complicated, but a few days later, Mary Vitt received an e-mail from Dr. Cook:

  Cassidy is doing great–have to drop the “Hobble-Along” part of her name now!! She is all healed up, spayed, and allowed to return to full function!! She has a GREAT home and is a NEAT dog!!

  The doctor attached a short video clip—just a few seconds of a pretty yellow Lab walking down a clinic corridor, a bright purple cast encasing her front left leg. The great home he mentioned was with one of his veterinary students who had decided to adopt Cassidy following the surgery.

  Back on the Eastern Navajo Reservation, Mary Vitt still worries over the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. She has names for all the regulars. Radar, Stella, Motley, and Pretty Boy Floyd are all still out there—part of the endless string of unwanteds that scrounge and struggle to survive in a harsh environment. Not long after Vitt rescued Cassidy, a small dog from the gang was hit by a car and killed. Vitt hadn’t decided on a name for him yet.