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- Hi, I'm Allison Janney, and this is Dutch, Sippy and Addie.

These are the three dogs that I've adopted and they all bring so much love and happiness to my life.

Animal shelters across the country are filled with beautiful pets that are just waiting for loving homes.

Shelter Me tells uplifting stories about these shelter pets and the people who help them.

In this episode, you'll meet a woman who travels to shelters with a program that increases adoptions, improves pet behavior, and makes shelters a very inviting place.

Oh my God.

Cuteness.

You'll also meet a group of volunteer pilots that save thousands of pets by flying them from overcrowded shelters to parts of the country where they're welcomed into new homes and given a second chance.

- I know - You will always find a friend at the shelter.

Please get involved.

They need your help and support.

Shelter pets will never forget that you gave them a new beginning.

♪ Shelter Me ♪ You will have all my love ♪ And loyalty - We are in the beautiful city of Philadelphia and we'll be working with ACCT Philly.

They are a big municipal open admission shelter, and we are here to help them get their dogs out of those kennels and get them playing together in big groups.

My name is Aimee Sadler.

I am the Director of Training and Behavior for the Southampton Animal Shelter Foundation and the founder of Dogs Playing For Life.

I'm very privileged because pretty much my job now is to run around the country and help other shelters just let their dogs out to play in groups.

And in doing all of that, we end up helping with lifesaving and adoption matching and helping rescues be able to pull dogs more successfully because they have more information.

Everybody wants happy, healthy social dogs.

So we're getting that started with playgroups everywhere we go.

- Animal Care and Control Team is the shelter contracted by The City of Philadelphia to perform animal care and control services.

So we handle about a little more over 30,000 animals per year.

Hi - About 20,000 of those are cats and 10,000 of those are dogs.

With a couple thousand other animals thrown in.

Our shelter was actually built on kind of an emergency basis because the former contractor that provided animal control from their own facility actually backed out of the contract and the shelter was thrown together in a really hasty fashion by the city because they had to.

They were really, their backs were up against the wall.

So our facility for dogs is actually a large what was formerly a boiler warehouse, and they placed kennels in it.

And we don't have enough kennels mathematically to hold all the dogs we need to hold.

In addition to not having enough space, the kennels are not designed for long-term humane housing.

They're not the square footage that you would want, ideally for a dog that was gonna stay for an extended period of time.

Pretty much everything that you could think about a kennel not being designed for long-term housing.

And the best possible care is what our kennels are.

- Most of our shelters are overwhelmed by the sheer number of dogs coming in on a daily basis.

There are not enough resources to cater to these dogs' behavioral needs when they're simply housing feeding and trying to keep these dogs alive for a certain length of time.

The idea of a playgroup handles a lot of problems all at the same time.

You can service many, many more dogs.

You can get a lot more exercise than simply a walk around the block or two would accomplish.

And you can then learn more about the behavioral stability of the dogs that you have under your care to make them much more adoptable in the long run, - What we've learned is that every shelter can do better by their dogs if they start out with a foundation of letting them play in groups.

So that's why it became a primary focus of mine to run around the country and teach every shelter how to do at least this piece.

Even with the best intentions to create a decent environment, being kenneled and being socially isolated from one another can create kennel craze and all of that behavioral deterioration that we really don't wanna see.

- It's very difficult to judge the true behavior nature of a dog when they're frustrated and jumping on the kennel door, wanting to be let out.

So many people go to a shelter, take a look, be overwhelmed, and leave.

By implementing these playgroups, you're giving the people an opportunity of seeing the dogs in an open area and a much more relaxed and a lot more fun environment.

And ultimately, you get to know the real dog and learn more about their true temperament and behavior.

- We're gonna do the presentation first.

It's about three hours.

And it's really nitty gritty on how to allot a video in the presentation because we want people to be ready when we go out there and we're handling the dogs directly so they kind of know where we're coming from and why we go about it the way that we do.

We kinda get them all juiced up to do it here.

And then we just go out this afternoon, we start running dogs.

- Thank you all for coming today.

Today we have Aimee Sadler here to show us about dog playgroups.

And I've seen Aimee do this at several places across the country and it is an amazing thing.

And if it's a program we can get to a sustainable place, what we're gonna find is an increase in adoptions and a lot of excitement in the community.

And the dogs are just gonna love it.

And it's gonna be really good for all those that want to participate in it, to really get a better understanding of how dogs communicate with each other.

And I'm glad that all you are here.

It's really, it's a special day.

- When I started to officially work with animal shelters in 1998, I was a professional trainer, but I didn't wanna go into the shelters 'cause it was painful for me.

I felt terribly for the dogs in that situation.

And then I realized how naive I was that I didn't understand that there was that much killing of the animals in the shelters.

And then the fact that it was for supposed behavior reasons, that to me as a trainer just seemed not fair and not accurate.

And so that's what really hooked me to get in here.

This is our team in Southampton at our shelter.

The thing that's interesting to note about these dogs is that all of them, except for one, were all extremely unleashed, reactive.

This becomes challenging for shelter dogs, but this becomes so much easier to get to when you let them go play first.

And that's the key to why these dogs could come working so nicely for unknown handlers because they already got all the excitement and the fun of going to play together.

It's just like letting kids go out to recess.

You know, we let them bounce around, use their outside voices, bonk each other on the head, tumble each other, wrestle, and then we want them to come into class and be better behaved.

I think that they do a better job teaching each other how to communicate like canines should communicate.

- You really want it to be about dog to dog.

So for me, as a handler, if I get in there and I'm kind of micromanaging them, they're not gonna learn how to respond to one another the same way.

- Poppy enough.

Poppy enough.

This video is so silly.

The things that you catch on tape, I'm telling you, she does not like greetings.

She's like, I just don't want you to sniff my butt.

Just not the butt.

No, not the butt.

The thing that's so funny about this is she doesn't want that backdoor greeting, which dogs do, right?

So I would like her to just smooth out with that.

And I think it would be kind of silly for me to bring her on a leash and try to make her hold still for a rear door greeting.

Just let her be with normal, healthy, friendly dogs and she'll just kind of desensitize and get used to that.

And she'll be in a normal envir-- and she'll just allow butt- sniffing one day, right?

Letting the dogs bounce around like that.

I think from my experience of walking dogs, you're gonna have to walk 'em for about two hours to get them to the same state of just satisfaction that they will get from bouncing around with the other dogs for 20 minutes.

Our goal is to cycle through your entire population while we're here and we're gonna handle that harder, rough start-up.

And then we're gonna transition to you guys as soon as we've rotated the population once and worked on the smoothing some out.

Alright, so anybody scared about just going out there and starting to run dogs and doing it?

- Scared and excited - - Scared and excited.

It's okay.

We're gonna see a lot of it in action and hopefully you're all feeling like really excited to get out there and do it now.

They're gonna feel happier about it.

You're gonna feel happier about it.

You're gonna learn a lot more about the dogs and you're gonna save more lives.

Okay?

Typically, I just tell a shelter to start bringing us dogs because whatever picture we're seeing in the kennel, I've learned that that means nothing to me anyway.

And I'm not gonna get any good read or assessment on the dogs in that situation.

Ask them to bring me what their best guess is at their social ones first, because we wanna go through the whole population, but I wanna find the easy social ones.

'cause they're gonna help us smooth out the trickier ones.

You can just drag the leash-- Yeah.

Yeah.

I was looking forward to meeting this one.

I remember her.

She looks super wiggly.

So we're just kind of doing a quick assessment at the gate to see if anything looks tense or threatening.

And if it doesn't look tense or threatening, we're just letting them into meet.

And let her in.

There you go.

Drop it.

Yeah.

Yep, yep.

Drop it.

There you go.

Their energy's high, right?

This is why startup is a little sticky.

Their intention is to play.

She's pretty bossy.

You know, she seems to definitely wanna establish herself.

The red one, the female.

This one's young.

Now, I remember she had some strong eye, she had some vocalization at the gate, but that paired with her tail made me feel like she was just super, super excited.

But I'm gonna give them a minute more.

Okay?

So what I'm seeing here is everything looks good, doesn't look like a problem.

So he gets to come in.

Ooh, don't shoot it.

They get to come out to playgroups, whether they're spayed or neutered or not.

And we monitor all of that.

All the dogs will certainly be spayed and neutered before they're adopted out.

So again, you see the energy, right?

It's, you know, it's understandable that they're like, oh my God, oh my God.

Like we're really here.

We're really doing this.

And you know, some of them are not gonna handle that well.

Again, I feel like their intention is to play.

If their intention was to hassle each other, they'd already be trying to do that.

Right?

Now I, I wanna see dogs that wanna come in there, just do some No, go ahead and switch him to somebody else.

I want somebody that looks like they wanna come in.

You know, he doesn't wanna greet her, so I'm afraid he is gonna come in and just clobber her.

I want a dog that comes to the fence and is like, oh, by God I can't wait to meet you.

You know, we've gotta find some of those.

They're in there.

Oh, oh, that was a wiggly.

Like her body language right there.

If you look at her, her, she's got that wiggly, more of a wiggly butt.

The ones that are coming in don't look so wiggly.

That doesn't look wiggly.

He doesn't look like he's gonna come in smoothly.

So next, we need a wiggle worm.

Safety's most important to us.

So there's times, if we're gonna let the dogs interact together, if some of them are gonna be argumentative or fight with each other or think they're gonna fight with each other, we're not gonna allow that to happen.

This is about play and healthy, good social communication.

He's trying to correct him and he is doing a great job.

So we need to be able to tell him to knock it off.

And we do that the least invasive way as possible.

So we've got some startling tools.

We use squirt bottles, we use shake hands with pennies or milk jugs with pebbles or pennies in them.

Or even if they come out frustrated in the beginning, we're gonna give them a chance to get to the good stuff.

So we use these startling tools to interrupt the unwanted behaviors.

There's all different levels and reasons why dogs are gonna fight.

Sometimes the dogs just don't have their skills or they've lost their skills from being sheltered.

There's just too much frustration, there's too much arousal and they don't know what to do with all that energy.

Their intention is to play, but they can tip into arguing because they're just wound up so tightly.

- If you're using a deterrent tool or negative reinforcer properly, it is not inhumane or abusive.

It really is distracting the dog from the behavior to give the handlers enough time to come in and separate those dogs before a serious injury occurs.

- Oh my god, cuteness.

That's what I'm talking about.

Good one.

- No one is suggesting that the kennel workers simply take a bunch of dogs and put them into a yard.

That's not how this is done.

However, for a minimum amount of training, you can show people what to look for, what to read in the dog's behavior, and how to make this an incredibly successful program with a minimum of effort.

- Nice.

I'm learning about each individual dog.

A little bit of information about their play style, just so I have that information for when we're running playgroup by ourselves.

- Energy feels really high.

Feels tense.

They could get cranky with each other.

Okay?

Now notice how she's going to her mouth, right?

But she's not biting down, right?

So dogs need to use their mouths to communicate.

So using your mouth, you don't get in trouble for using your mouth.

You get in trouble for using your mouth aggressively, right?

You don't get in trouble for using your mouth correctively, but you use your mouth aggressively and that's what we're gonna stop.

Let me just see if he looks like he wants to be friendly.

Oftentimes when people ask for us, they're concerned about the dogs fighting.

They're concerned about the safety to the handlers.

So we're gonna see if this is possible.

You don't know till you try.

And we explain to them, you know, yeah, letting animals have contacts, things are gonna happen, but we're dealing with animals.

That's what we do for a living.

And things happen in our normal daily care of our animals.

Nobody wants loose animals running around the kennel, but hey, animals get loose from us, right?

Things happen.

Nobody wants their volunteers bitten and animals become afraid and possibly people get bitten when they're trying to handle the animals.

That's called handling animals.

We need to look at the practical reality of what's going on, right?

You have to take the context into consideration and in sheltering, the sad part is if we do not attend to these animals properly, there's a potential that they will die at our hands in the name of sheltering them and in the name of being humane.

Oh my God, he looks like he's gonna be gorgeous.

Look, he's very handsome.

Aw, see?

See?

Isn't that exciting?

Did you guys see the full body wiggle that he had?

- Woo.

There you go.

Playgroups are really fantastic.

In addition to providing the outlet for the dogs to get the energy out, to feel good, to feel better about being in the shelter, it's also an amazing time for adopters and rescues to actually see the dogs.

A pit bull type dog, a brown, medium sized dog who's next to another brown, medium sized dog, they all look the same in the kennel.

They don't look like a dog who could be at your house.

And when you're seeing 'em in playgroups, they're actually acting like a dog that you could imagine playing in your backyard, playing with your kids, taking to the dog park.

So that is a fantastic, not only opportunity for them, but an opportunity for us to market these dogs really well.

Yep, - She's awesome.

She's your rock star so far.

I think that if this one is easy peasy with this female, if she's as loosey goosey and great with this female, then to me, there you go.

You've got your best breeder rock star we've had.

We think that we found the best rock star in the house so far.

That's Sheba.

She just seems like she's just friendly and just playful and just likes dogs.

Here it goes.

She's gonna bust it out.

We're so afraid of letting dogs be together and be dogs, but this is what's normal for them.

What we do to them in there is not normal.

So that brings out their worst.

This brings out their best.

So our, our rock star doesn't seem worried about her at all.

Right?

Yeah.

But isn't it interesting that now that you've seen her like this and a family came in and wanted to go to the dog park and everything, who's the first dog that's gonna come to your mind?

Yeah, and she's a nice dog, but don't you feel like it's like, oh, she's really marketable now.

Like you wanna tell everybody about how great she is with the other dogs?

It was great.

We ran about 21 dogs, 21 down and about 80 something to go.

So I'm looking forward to getting through the rest of the population tomorrow.

We did find one rock star today and then a couple of others that were pretty good.

And we'll be rotating through the rest tomorrow and see how many more we can find.

And then we're gonna see a group together, which will be really nice.

We've been to over 70 shelters at this point all over the country, introducing the playgroup as the foundation to really getting to saving lives.

And one of my favorite shelters that we visited was Barks in Maryland.

They've really taken the program and run with it.

It's easy for us to identify when there's strong leadership.

Jennifer was there as the Executive Director and she was clear about what had needed to be done and she was gonna get it done.

- When Aimee Sadler came and was doing her training on enrichment, she started to really focus on playgroups in her presentation.

And when she was doing that, I kept thinking, is she crazy?

We, we can't do that here.

You know, we have medium to large sized dogs.

They're, they have so much energy, it's hard enough to walk them.

They're pulling us down the street.

So the thought of putting them together in an area and allowing them to interact, I, I was completely shocked.

I thought that would was a crazy idea.

And you know, the more she talked about it, I recognized that, okay, there are benefits of doing that and I can see that, but I don't know that that would work here.

- I was relatively new to working in the animal shelter environment.

Then when I started doing playgroups and found that most of the dogs really like each other, even if they have to work on their social skills, I thought that was one of the coolest things in the world, you know, to find out.

- Right?

Yeah, come on in.

So that's Angel.

When Aimee Sadler was here training us playgroups.

We were watching a lot of the volunteers and staff in these playgroups.

And one person that stood out to us was Brian George.

He was an animal care attendant, was cleaning and feeding the animals.

But what we learned is that he really understood behavior.

- I did it.

- And so watching him in these playgroups, we thought, he's the one that can really help us to take this program and run with it.

- What's wrong buddy?

- We ended up getting enough funding to hire him as our Enrichment Coordinator and he runs the playgroups every day.

- No, I'm not a certified trainer or behaviorist.

I think I have the innate and instinctual ability, like I understand dogs and, and then also there's just loving dogs, you know?

- Right now I'm just assessing his response.

All of the dogs' responses to each other.

There we go.

- Seeing, you know, seeing if he looks friendly and interested and so on.

We'll let him in.

We'll see how he does.

What's on buddy?

It's really control.

You have to monitor everything and then intervene when necessary.

You know, - Playgroups are extremely beneficial because it allows the animals a chance to do what's natural to them.

To interact with other dogs, to have that socialization, to really get out that physical energy that most of the dogs have.

Being in a cage is not normal.

It's not natural.

So to be able to get outside and, and to do what they are meant to do, it's healthy for them mentally and it stimulates their mind.

- Humans are the best trainers for dogs, but dogs are the best teachers for other dogs, the way I see it.

- There's things that dogs do together that you can't replace by just walking them or throwing a toy in their kennel or giving them a treat.

It's amazing to see dogs come outta their shell and how much they benefit and actually how much we benefit too because we learn more about their behavior by seeing them interact with each other and, be just dogs, than we can just walking them or looking at them in the kennel.

So it's good for us and it's amazing for the dogs.

- Some of these dogs are just meeting for the first time.

They don't know each other yet.

You know, the animals need people that care about them, you know, to take care of them.

There is a big difference between just animal sheltering and animal warehousing.

We are an animal shelter.

We actually shelter and care for them.

- The euthanasia rate prior to Barks was 98%.

Pretty much any animal that came in was gonna be euthanized.

There just wasn't any focus on any kind of life-saving.

So when Barks came in, we worked really hard on creating better adoption programs, doing everything we could to save lives, including adding programs like playgroups and foster programs.

And by doing all of that, we've now increased the lives saved to almost 9,000 animals a year, which brings it down to a 23% euthanasia rate.

Playgroups are very helpful as far as matching the right animal with the right owner.

It gives us more information about that animal, their personality, how they do with people and other dogs.

How are they outside with all these different noises?

So having that information helps us to increase adoptions because adopters love to see that.

They love to have that information because in a cage you don't always know.

Dogs bark a lot more in a cage.

They jump up at the cage, they cower in the back and you really don't get a feel for their personality.

But when they're in these playgroups, you can see who that dog is and what they would more likely be like in your home.

We do playgroups every single day and we get it out about 50 to a hundred dogs from our shelter every single day.

We cycle through them and Brian just watches that behavior along with the volunteers.

They monitor what's going on.

If an animal gets too tired or is a little too riled up or doesn't have very good social skills, you know, they'll work with that animal a little bit and then they'll take it back inside and bring in a new one.

So it's just a rotation through the shelter all day long.

Just trying to get the animals out and getting that exercise.

- A tired dog's a good dog.

They behave better when they're feeling good.

Calm is what we are looking for.

It really has helped to boost staff morale and the volunteer morale, 'cause it's an exciting thing to do and it's nice to see the animals get out of their cages and enjoy life.

- Yesterday we've identified some of the social dogs, so we're piling them in this morning and we're gonna be circling back around to help some of the dogs that were turned away for looking a little tricky.

So we've got our, our phenomenal helper dogs all lined out and we're gonna rotate the whole population today and let their staff and volunteers take over and be running their own playgroups.

We're excited about today.

I'm really excited for the staff that's gonna participate and what they may learn here today and get their ideas of how we can continue this after Aimee and her team leaves.

And I'm also really excited to get the volunteers to get them re-engaged in this type of activity.

- The volunteers should share with us that it could be a couple of days before a dog actually gets outta their kennel.

I just can't wait to see the dogs having a great time.

- Excited to get everybody out here.

Yeah, all the dogs out.

That's, that's big and it's gonna be fun.

- It's different than what we're used to because I love dogs so much.

I'm just not used to working with dogs in a group, so I'm kind of like excited to be able to try that out.

- It's scary sometimes walking through those kennels.

It's sad, but it's gonna be great to be able to see them happy and doing what they wanna be doing rather than stuck in there.

I think it's gonna really change perceptions.

- Now I get an opportunity to run playgroup, so it'll be interesting.

Cat was out.

- Basically I've been keeping notes on the dogs, trying to decide what categories dogs might go in.

- Ask your helpers if you need help backing the other dogs off, but it'll be a good exercise in getting him out and keeping it calm while you get him out.

Okay.

- And you're taking the leash off, why?

- Because I'm comfortable with her.

- Okay.

- And I think she'll do All right.

- Awesome.

- Okay.

My plan is to have playgroup go on three times a week.

I'm really excited about it.

I've never had this many dogs in a run together.

Do you wanna get Cat?

We'll be taking videos and pictures of the dogs as they're engaging in playgroup and we're gonna take their notes and add that to their kennel cards.

And that's gonna be a lot of information that adopters, fosters, rescues can use.

If we can use this as the jumping off point to help get dogs out into loving homes, rescues, fosters, adopters, you know, that'll be extremely beneficial.

We'll have more open kennels, more time to focus on an individual dog, do some behavior modification work with full kennels.

We don't always have that opportunity.

If we can help get dogs into homes, that would be, that would be great.

- A lot of times shelters have just like here, the yard is right out in the front parking lot.

And so we've been watching people come in and out and observing the playgroups and people are just watching, smiling.

It makes us happy to see living beings play.

And the first question out of their mouths when they typically want to adopt a dog is how is that dog with other dogs?

Well, right now, before they even walk in the building, they'll say, Hey, I saw a red and brown dog out there, or a blue dog out there and it was bouncing around really, really playful.

I love that.

Can I meet that dog?

- We were leaving and we seen her running around out there and it was perfect timing because we seen her playing with the other dog.

And that was exactly what we wanted to see, 'cause we know our dog's interaction with another dog.

So to see her playing and you know, they were roughhousing a little bit, but nothing dangerous.

So it was perfect.

- The white dog Lady that came out, there was a family on the fence line here that was observing and they said they were looking at Lady in the kennel that she seemed the most gregarious with their baby.

They wanted to visit with her and Lady was swooped out of there because she was being brought out here.

And so they came out to observe her and they were really excited because they have a dog at home.

So that was, Oh wow, she was friendly to us at the kennel.

She's friendly with dogs.

They did a visit while we were here, which was great, but it was nice that they got to see that interaction and that just helped to seal the deal.

- Tomorrow we're going to bring our dog to visit her and she's gotta get her surgery.

And right after that she'll be coming home.

She's found a home.

Our long-term goal is actually to eliminate the euthanasia of saveable animals that are sheltered.

And we wanna try anything that's going to have a positive impact.

And the playgroups are really an important part of that for dogs.

For any program, there are risks.

The ultimate risk for a dog in a shelter like ours is euthanasia.

So although there are risks associated with any program, any shelter that wants to explore a new opportunity should really weigh the risks versus the reward.

And if the ultimate risk is death for the dog, then exploring every opportunity you can is really worth it.

- I think we had a great couple of days.

I am happy for you because I think you're gonna have a lot more fun handling all these dogs.

You're gonna learn a lot more about them.

I'm especially excited for the dogs.

But you know, remember this is your baby, you know, so you can go with it.

Now you're ready.

You did a great job.

The dogs are ready.

They're showing you we can do this thing, we can do it right.

So just keep it moving forward and you're gonna have fun with it.

Everything's gonna feel better all the way around.

Thank you so much.

We're getting to a new age of sheltering.

We're not gonna have to be killing as many animals anymore.

We're gonna be saving these animals and let's make sure that we're maintaining them behaviorally and emotionally.

- Thank you so much.

- You did a great job.

Yay.

- Awesome.

- My name is Yehuda Netanel and I'm the founder of Wings of Rescue.

We are a volunteer pilot organization who combined our passion for flying with the passion to save shelter animals.

Our mission is to team up with dog rescuers and animal shelters in order to find places for them to have a second chance in life.

- This is Malcolm.

So he came to us as a stray.

We really don't know his backstory, but his story starts with us and he got overlooked for weeks.

You're a good boy?

You like this?

Mostly we're just overloaded.

There's too many animals and not enough houses and transports to get these animals to cities where they don't have maybe a lot of big dogs.

They don't have a lot of little dogs.

And we have more than enough of everything.

This system of animal shelters takes in tens of thousands of dogs every year.

The hope is that we can have a monthly airlift with Los Angeles County.

And although it's not gonna solve the problem, we hope that we can shed some light on to a problem that is here in our backyard - Until our cities get educated.

Our people are proactive about spay and neuter, microchip and all that stuff.

Until then, transports are pretty much our only way out for a lot of these dogs.

- This coming weekend, we are taking to the skies with nine aircraft, filled with over 100 dogs from the LA County animal shelter system.

And they are all flying to northern Idaho to wonderful shelters.

They will be adopted hopefully within the same weekend.

- It's an unfortunate situation that we have.

We do get animals in daily, but they're loving animals, they're great animals.

What a transport is, is it's basically taking animals that we're overwhelmed with and we find local receiving shelters that have a need in their community for these beautiful dogs.

And it saves a life.

It truly, truly saves many, many lives.

- It makes all the hard work we do here worthwhile.

We serve a purpose and that purpose is their last chance.

There's a place for them.

There really is.

We just need to find those homes.

- Hi Ellie Mae.

All right, so this is one of the dogs going on the Idaho Transport today.

I'm Dr. Jones.

I work with animal control.

Today I'm doing surgeries on all these dogs.

I'm the surgical veterinarian for the day.

All right, Tattoo, let me take a look at you.

Getting them vaccinated.

We're getting microchips, they're getting health certificates and they're getting their spay or neuter surgery.

A hundred of these guys are going out and it's hard work for the medical team, but it's worth it to see these guys get adopted.

- Most of the dogs that have been selected have been here at the shelter a long time with no interest, no wants.

When Monroe is dropped off here at the shelter, she was in pretty bad shape.

But our volunteers groomed her up and she looks great.

Now she's ready to fly to Idaho.

- Hi Debbie.

- Hi Doona.

How are you?

Okay, getting ready for the big day.

- We are.

Isn't that amazing that in a place like Couer d'Alene, you have a shortage of these dogs.

And guess what?

There are so many of these great dogs out here that we can actually fulfill all this shopping list.

It's amazing.

- Yehuda called me out of the blue and he explained to me what they do and if we would be interested in taking dogs.

And I said absolutely.

- I'm very excited and can't wait for all the planes to be on the ground with all the doggies.

- Okay, Yehuda, have a safe flight.

- Thank you.

Bye Debbie.

- Why we can take pets up here is because we've done such a phenomenal job of getting our current pets adopted.

We do take from rescues, we do take from our local animal control shelter in Post Falls.

Knowing that we were getting 80 dogs in on Saturday, we were still able to take five dogs this past week.

- It is unusual where small town America can actually offer a helping hand to big time, to big cities.

And we will be able to triple the number of dogs we're currently airlifting and find them new places to have a life.

- So we're almost to the wire.

We got some great dogs.

Most of the dogs are at a clinic now.

- Oh, that's great.

Unfortunately, our intake of animals is very high.

The saddest part of our job is to have to euthanize, you know, healthy animals because of our population.

You know, our facility can only house so many, but there's not enough adopters here.

What I know about Wings of Rescue is that they're heaven-sent to us.

You know, some of these dogs that are going on the transport, were literally pulled out of this euthanasia list and given a second chance.

- Okay, so you have Porsche on there.

We do.

- Lilac.

- We do.

- Mr. Peabody.

- Finnegan!

- Finnegan, oh yes.

- It means less euthanasia, more lives being saved.

- Thistle and China.

- How about Knuckles?

- Knuckles, Mr. Knuckles?

- Oh yes.

- Look at that beard.

Huh?

So what do we know about Knuckles?

He's gorgeous.

- I believe that he was owner- surrendered.

How sad is that?

You know that our intake on a daily basis, we average about, you know, between 35 up to 50.

In our outcoming animals, you know, it may be between 20.

So that gives us a huge gap, right?

- We do have adopters that come in, but not enough for the amount of turn ins that come in every day.

These transports are a marvelous, marvelous thing that happens.

This is why we do it, huh?

Huh Knuckles.

- When we can't save an animal, it's heartbreaking.

But this week I've seen a whole lot of smiling going on.

- We're doing a glamor shot for Downey Animal Care Center, and most of these dogs today are being transported up to Idaho.

And these dogs are awesome.

- We're taking a little bit more time and care and trying to get a glamor shot, which hopefully makes them just a little bit more attractive and, and look like they could be sitting in, sitting on your couch at home.

Hey, hey.

There we go.

- Well this is Finnegan.

Yeah, a lot of times people look at a shelter dog or think about the shelter dogs and think they're all junkyard dogs or they've been stray for a long time and they're vicious or something.

But no, the majority of them are just wonderful household pets.

That either got lost or their owners didn't come to look for 'em.

Hey Finnegan, you're gonna have a wonderful, wonderful home and be saved from a different fate that might have happened here.

'Cause we have so many dogs.

So you're a very, very lucky dog.

- People really do have the misconception that we're just animal dog catchers and we're out just to pick up straight animals just so we can get 'em out of the street and euthanize them.

But the whole deal is actually giving them homes.

Shelter dogs are the best dogs to adopt.

Look at Champion.

He's a perfect example.

He was picked up in Compton from one of the animal control officers.

He was malnourished when he came in you, you were able to see his rib cages and now he's gained about 10 pounds.

It's rewarding to be able to help a dog, especially when you know that his outcome's not gonna be euthanasia.

It's gonna be flying to another state and getting a good home.

- It's about 5:40 in the morning right now.

We're getting ready to start getting the wonderful dogs out of the cages.

Exercise them a little bit, have all the wonderful volunteers and staff get them ready to go on their new life journey.

- You are on your way.

Okay, good boy.

It's a long day for them.

And the familiar volunteers are soothing them and making sure that they're comfortable.

- Bring their crate in here, put 'em in and this goes on their crate.

- This is Monroe came into us as a stray.

You can tell she's super happy, huh?

We're due down at the airport at nine o'clock.

So we're leaving here.

Maybe 7:30, 8:00.

- Kendall Kendall.

Good boy.

So I think we're gonna be good to go.

- Good morning everybody.

As you know, we have nine aircraft here.

All told from LA County Animal Services, we're taking about 120 dogs or so.

This is an emotional high for a lot of the shelter volunteers here.

This is the first time that LA County is actually teaming up with anybody to do an airlift like that.

So this is a big deal for them.

Pilots typically are very disciplined people, people in the business world who have accomplished a lot in their life.

And this is one way for them to give back to society.

We are going to be saving a lot of lives today, thanks to you and to all the volunteers that helped us.

And let's go and fly those puppies out.

- And then we'll put the ID number on the crate, on the on the red table.

Okay?

- Yeah, I think we're good.

I really do.

- Looks like you've got it all together.

We gotta get the dogs out.

Champion, I know it's gonna be a long day for you buddy.

Seven years old and he has a wonderful life ahead of him.

You be sure to send us the postcard when you get there.

- Okay.

- This is Portia.

I have been crying over this dog.

I absolutely love her.

She's been here a long time.

She's been waiting and I'm so happy.

- Say hi honey.

I know the dogs.

I've looked at them, looked at paperwork so often.

When they go by I'm like, there's Flip Flop.

There goes Pork Chop, you know, there goes Ika.

So when they actually leave, I think I'm gonna be crying.

- Alright, Knuckles, gonna miss you buddy.

But you're going to a great place.

- I just wanna thank everybody for coming out this morning.

We're gonna head on to the airport, we're gonna finish up and then we're gonna have to celebrate after this summer.

We absolutely have to celebrate.

- The logistics is a little complicated, but nothing that is not manageable.

As pilots, we are used to organize things.

Because Wings of Rescue is a volunteer pilot organization first.

So when the missions are being organized, they are being put together so the pilots' needs and concerns are well taken care of.

- It's combining the two loves.

My love, my passion for flying and love for flying and the love for animals.

And on top of it, it's, it's a great cause - Going for a round trip like we're doing today, it will cost the average pilot here, about $2,500 to $5,000 for that trip.

This is what they're donating.

So this is their contribution for the rescue society and, and the rescue community.

- We got involved with Wings of Rescue when we were traveling through Salem, Oregon.

Here's this guy named Yehuda, loading and unloading dogs.

And you know, one thing led to another and we contacted Yehuda about three months ago and made our first trip.

So we're really new to this.

There's a lot of love for the animals around here, obviously.

And so when you see that and you can be a little part of it, it's, it's very cool.

Okay, let's bring in the trailers.

- This is awesome.

Seeing all the other shelters here, seeing staff and volunteers.

Look at all these beautiful planes all lined up.

Work is not over.

It's, it's more or less almost just beginning.

We're actually gonna be unloading the animals systematically to make sure each one is identified and going to go into each specific plane.

So when we get to the the destination point, then we're able to unload and make sure they go to the proper humane societies.

- It's so rewarding.

We know that they're going to get a forever home.

That's what we're doing this for.

All these volunteers are here because they love animals just as much as us and their hearts are in it so much.

So I don't know, we'll go from there.

I haven't loaded dogs on planes personally, so it's a first for me too.

So I'm excited.

- I've been working with Wings of Rescue for about a year and a half now.

Well the reason that I feel it's important to do this is if you consider what happens to the dogs that don't have homes and in the Southern California area especially, there's so many and I think that if there's a chance for them to find a home and to be someplace where, where they can really thrive, you gotta give it to them.

- We do all kinds of transports.

The ones overground.

So if we tried to drive to Idaho, it would take more than a day.

When you can fly 'em on an airplane, they're there within a couple hours, two, three hours.

The dogs aren't stressed out, they're not in a truck all day.

As soon as they see our dogs, there's gonna be word of mouth and there's gonna be other communities that open up and they're gonna want dogs.

We have got plenty of dogs to send.

- A big challenge right now is getting all the big dogs and crates that will fit into the plane.

'cause we have too many big crates, so we need to fit 'em all in or else they have to go back to the shelter.

- The size of the crates is bigger than sometimes, so we're having trouble making 'em all fit.

So we're fitting it together.

Like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

- Doesn't have enough room for three crates.

Oh right.

We are trying to get as many of the dogs on the plane as possible.

We may have to even recreate them, put 'em in smaller crates.

But we want them by no means to have to go back to the shelter.

- The size.

He's trying to fit in the size of his plane because it's a little narrower near the back.

- This one?

- The shelters are extremely full right now.

So we don't want any dog going back to the shelter.

We need to make sure that every dog we brought out today gets on that plane.

- Two small crates that way and one small crate above your back.

- We've been playing Tetris with the airplanes all day and we're trying to make sure that the right dog fits into the smallest space possible without cramping the dogs so the dog can ride comfortably, safely.

So we can get more dogs in.

- One more inch.

- Here we go.

We did it.

- Congratulations.

I think we're just about ready to go.

- Okay.

There's one left.

Be enough room for me and possibly another small dog next to me.

I always fly with a dog copilot.

- No dog left behind you got it.

Ready to go.

No dogs left behind.

No dogs left behind.

- We're doing okay buddy?

We've been doing transports for like two years now and I've never seen the shelter that they go to.

Right here is Tattoo right here is Billy the Kid.

These are all dogs that I've seen every day for weeks and months.

And just to even like travel with them to get 'em to the shelter is super exciting for me.

- And today a hundred animals flew out.

But when we get back into the shelter, you know we're gonna see a line of strays, owner surrenders coming in.

By the end of the week, we're gonna be full up capacity again.

- So we're still gonna be overcrowded.

The only solution to this whole problem is spay and neuter clinics so that we don't have the overpopulation.

But for right now, Wings of Rescue, we're saving thousands of lives this way.

- Oh, the flying conditions today are just about perfect.

We're at a 24,000 foot altitude and we have very few winds up here.

So it's a nice smooth flight.

Well, I've got about 20 dogs if they're quiet, they haven't been barking very much, which some, sometimes you do get that.

But we got some very good passengers this time.

- The volunteers, the public are all excited about waiting a couple hours for these planes to come in.

I need four more people.

Everybody is just excited to have these dogs and save them.

- Took us about a little over three and a quarter hours to get up here.

And of course once we arrived, I mean the crowd of people here that were here to greet us is just fantastic to see.

And one of the things that always amazes me about these Wings of Rescue flights is we bring the animals here, as soon as I open the door, there's a whole team of people that just swoop them away and have big smiles on their faces.

And you can tell these animals are ready to go to loving homes.

- I have a couple rescue dogs myself, but we have a great community here so I know that they'll go to good homes.

- My name's Cindy Smith and I'm co-founder for Wings of Rescue.

It was an amazing day to fly And then when we land we had over 100 volunteers here helping us unloading these dogs.

In the last three and a half years, Wings of Rescue has transported over 7,000 shelter dogs to rescue organizations and humane societies.

I feel a little shy.

It's okay, Pumpkin.

Those are always the greatest.

When you can deliver somebody their new best friend - Just for you Bruce, Pork Chop.

- It's cold in here.

It's beyond words how these pilots bring these animals out of the situations they're in and in three hours have them up here.

We take them off the planes and they're over in our shelter and people are already adopting them.

It's just remarkable, the time and the commitment that they make to these animals.

Woo.

- Mission accomplished, huh?

- I think he's thinking that I'm safe and I'm gonna have a good home with somebody.

Absolutely.

- They started like at 4:00 AM and we got down to the shelter, we got all the dogs ready, we packed them up in the plane.

There's a little chaos and confusion, but it all got settled and now we're here and Malcolm is looking for his new home.

It's like the perfect dog, huh?

I know, I know.

Sorry.

Gonna be good.

You're gonna love the snow.

Maybe.

You are from LA.

- It is cold.

It's probably around, I would assume 45 to 50.

But my mind is so joyed because of what's going on today.

I don't necessarily feel it myself.

No jacket.

- Welcome to North Idaho.

Thank you.

And he is gorgeous.

Hi Malcolm.

Hi.

We've had about a hundred volunteers here today.

- Wow.

And we have team leaders in the vest that lead in the dogs back to the shelter.

So once they come off, we do a parade over there and it's about four tenths of a mile.

And we're having an adoption event today.

When I came over there was probably seven or eight adoptions already.

- That's wonderful.

Wonderful news for us.

Especially wonderful for Malcolm.

- Malcolm.

Yes.

Malcolm.

You'll find a home.

He might not even make it through the parking lot.

- When you're around the animal shelter environment, you really see the worst of people and the best of people.

You see the people that are abandoning their pets and then you see the people that save them.

- I tear up when I read the words Wings of Rescue 'cause it's just such an amazing organization.

I mean the fact that the coordinated effort between the pilots and the shelters.

- We're guessing about 11 dogs have been adopted so far.

But we've heard there might be even more.

We just haven't been able to get a count.

- I'm gonna cry because it's just been wonderful.

- I heard some great stories today about how dogs got adopted literally off the airport ramp.

The whole Wings of Rescue proposition fits so nicely in terms of supplying the demand that's here.

So it's great to see it, you know, from beginning to end.

And there's a lot of people here that seem interested in adopting today.

And then of course in the big cities we have the spaying and neutering education issue and just the proliferation of breeding of, of homeless dogs.

It's a complex problem, but it seems to be one that you know, there's ways to accelerate the adoption.

And what I love about everything that we do and everything they do is these are animals that have been taken mostly from places where they were scheduled to be euthanized.

And they've now found a new home and a new life that makes me feel real good.

- Beautiful.

He has the best temperament.

This is what he does.

He just lets you pet him and wants to be loved.

- Aisha is overwhelmed with happiness and joy and that's just not us, 'cause we're the lucky ones that got to see this wonderful handoff.

It's a little sad because we continue to get dogs in, but we're still preaching about spay and neutering.

You know, to me that's gonna help tremendously.

But as we're slowly getting the word out and we get the dogs in, coming to awesome programs like this with, you know, Wings of Rescue and coming here to be able to bring animals into new forever homes in a beautiful, loving community is, there's nothing else we could ask for.

- We hope to be put out of business.

We really do.

Spay and neuter is the key.

It's the number one answer to this problem.

But until then, we're going to continue to help transport these animals on a monthly basis, which will help out the morale immensely for the staff and volunteers of the shelters to see their pets get a second chance.

- For us pilots, it's very rewarding and and gratifying to see that all this hard work is actually being met by such an enthusiastic group of people.

It has been a long day, but a happy long day.

These are the kind of long days we'd like to see more and more.

- On Saturday we had nine planes come in from LA and we brought in 103 animals to Kootenai Humane Society.

And Panhandle also had 25.

- We held an adoption event today because we received the wonderful dogs from the LA County shelter through Wings of Rescue.

And we really wanted to offer an event that the community could come in.

- Hey Derek Walker here broadcasting live.

I'm at the Panhandle Animal Shelter and boy loaded inside today people are adopting dogs and cats left and right.

Right now I'm standing here with the Executive Director of the Panhandle Animal Shelter, Mandy Evans.

And you still got a few dogs left?

- Yes, we do.

We have, Tattoo is actually standing right in front of me.

He's looking for his forever home.

Flew in from LA yesterday.

And then we also have Ellie Mae.

Ellie Mae is two years old, also came in from LA yesterday.

- The outpour of the community, the last three days has just been phenomenal.

And you can just see the joy of people walking in the shelter looking for the right pet.

- Beautiful little poodle, 10 months old.

And I'm gonna give her a good home.

And she's got a big backyard all fenced in.

- And the community's out here in droves adopting dogs right behind me.

We're seeing that the dogs that were flown in yesterday are being adopted.

This is what makes us so motivated to keep doing these flying missions.

- Gonna adopt Malcolm, filling out the paperwork, pay his bail.

- This is Mr. Peabody and he came from the Downey shelter in Los Angeles with this big group last night.

And he is about seven years old.

And he is, he's really, really sweet - To know that the animals that we have received would have been killed and to watch them walking out the door.

And that's all due to the people from Wings of Rescue and putting their own resources to fly these dogs up.

And it's just, it's tremendous.

- Let's go.

You go for a walk?

Come on baby.

Yeah, it's amazing that Champion is actually here.

To have him just weeks before be so thin and look so healthy now and be so happy he's gonna find a great home.

I just know it.

- Get the ball.

Go ahead boy.

And as you can see, he doesn't know what quite to do in this open area with grass and gravel and, and the whole bit.

So he's just gonna love it up here.

Good, good.

- We're so glad to have you here.

We're gonna find a good home.

You know that.

Yes you are.

Look at that pretty face.

- Oh yeah.

- We have been very successful in getting the dogs into loving homes.

I think that half of them in three days shows that there is a need and the community will come.

- I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who worked with Finnegan, took care of him, got him here safely, and we really love him.

- Sweet boy.

- I feel proud that we've been a part of something so special.

It's just a really awesome opportunity for both people and animals and the dogs that came up here to know that was it for them.

They were being overlooked and they're awesome dogs and they were being overlooked and we were able to provide them with a home.

It makes me feel great.

- Well, his job is to hold the couch down, peel the covers off of tennis balls, play out in the yard, bark at whatever.

I can't imagine why somebody would just turn him loose.

He's such a good looking dog and he's got such a great temperament.

He likes everybody.

Really happy with everybody that was involved.

All the way from the shelter to Wings of Rescue to the Kootenai Humane Society.

And he came all the way, like, what is it about 1600 miles or something, you know, to come up here and he just wanted somebody to care about him.

- I think up here, they're gonna have a life that they probably never had in California because they're gonna have green grass, dog parks to go to.

They're gonna have the lakes to go run and play in.

- I am definitely fortunate that they flew him up here.

Definitely a lot to do out here and being in the outdoors.

So get a lot of exercise and be able to do a lot of running.

Have a lot of fun, huh?

- And because most people up here really do exercise and take care of their animals and it's just they've become part of the family.

- Well, we're hoping to adopt Portia.

I had no idea that she had such a story behind her and now it, I, it just makes her even more special.

- Well, we've introduced her to my little man over there and it seems to be a pretty good match.

They don't seem to really mind each other whatsoever.

And so we're taking her home.

She just found a home today - And she was in a shelter for several months, which is pretty unusual for a pit bull.

Normally they would've been put to sleep by then.

So there was definitely someone looking out for her.

She had a guardian that just kept her safe and kept protecting her until she made the journey.

Huh baby.

She came into my life at a time when I really just needed something that was gonna love me unconditionally.

She's one of the biggest first responsibilities other than leaving my ex-husband.

She's one of the first big responsibilities I've taken on since I left, just kind of signifying my independence in my new life and finding that brand new me.

Just like she's gonna find a brand new her.

We're gonna be happy ♪ Behind the door inside the walls ♪ ♪ Sinking under the weight of it all.

♪ ♪ Little did I know when I ♪ Was reaching out to help you ♪ I was just as much ♪ in need of a rescue.

♪ Tell me who saved who, now - You can always take a look at the waving tails and you know, they are thankful to you for saving their lives.

to you for saving their lives.

♪ Little did I know when ♪ I was reaching out to help you ♪ ♪ I was just as much in need ♪ Of a rescue ♪ Tell me who saved who, now?

♪ Tell me who saved who, now?

♪ Tell me who saved who, now?

- There's a wonderful life ahead of him, huh?

Be sure and send us the postcard when you get there.

Okay.

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