Before you read this flight story I’ve got to share the good news with you, all the dogs were adopted soon after we got them to The Eleventh Hour Rescue in New Jersey.

Megan from Paws for Life a program of The Franklin County Humane Society contacted us about flying eight dogs for them to The Eleventh Hour Rescue in Randolph, NJ. All of the dogs came from Granville County Animal Shelter. A rural shelter in NC that gets very little traffic or adoptions and has a high kill rate.

Shadow, the 52 lbs mom of four puppies and about 2 years old with an all black coat, was found with her puppies wandering around a busy road in danger of being hit by cars. A good samaritan stopped and picked them all up and brought them to the shelter. Shelter’s are not a good place for puppies, they can pick up infections and diseases quickly.

Of the four puppies there is Raven, female, and her coat is all black like her mom’s. Tigger, is male and his coat is brindle. Zan the other male has a tan coat with black on his face. He is often confused with Jayna our second female who is also tan with black on her face.

They were about 10 weeks old and weighed about 12 lbs. each. Shadow and her pups were found wandering around a busy road in danger of being hit by cars. They were all picked up by a good Samaritan who brought them to the shelter. The shelter was going to put all five of them down if someone didn’t rescue them soon.

Kimmy & Cassidy are two sisters were about 15 lbs. each 1 years old. The only way we could tell them apart was by their collars. Kimmy was wearing a black collar, and Cassidy wearing a red one. Kimmy and Cassidy were strays running around on a dirt road in the country. They looked like they were well cared for but no one came to claim them and the shelter was getting full so they were close to being euthanized.

Azula female puppy around 11 weeks old and weighed 17 lbs. She is a white and tan boxer mix. Someone came to the shelter after hours and put her in the “drop box”. They don’t know if she was put there by someone who no longer wanted her or someone who found her running stray. None of these animals had microchips in them.

We met all of the fosters, Gary (Shadow and puppies), Debra (Azula) and Jessica (Kimmy and Cassidy) at TAC Air at the Raleigh Durham Airport. I have to say, getting all of the dogs in the plane and in their places was quite a challenge. But on this flight we had great help from our friends at TAC Air.

This was an unusual flight because of having puppies from different litters we had to keep them separate from everyone so we had to use crates. Kimmy and Cassidy were in one crate, Shadow’s puppies were in another crate, Shadow was tethered so she could be near her puppies and Azula was in tethered in the co-pilots seat. But we were happy to get them all up north so they could be adopted.

The flight up was really great. Everyone settled down and slept most of the way up. I got to spend a lot of time with Shadow since she was the only one I could really get to. She is so sweet and thinks she’s a lap dog! She kept trying to get up on Pam’s lap so Pam untethered her and she jumped right up.

She loves looking out the window so she made Pam sit on the floor for a bit. But before too long she came back down on the floor and Pam went back onto the seat. It was long, farther than we usually go but it was so worth it. We landed in Morrisville, NJ and met up with volunteers Michelle and Eileen. They both were great and have a real love for the dogs. We said our tearful goodbyes to all the dogs and soon they were on their way. (A few days later we found out all of the dogs had been adopted.)

We had lunch and then it was time to head back to Raleigh. We took off and headed home. It was starting to rain so we asked for ATC if we could fly at 10,000 feet where we could get above the clouds for a smooth ride. It seemed like it was going to be a nice and relaxing flight back. Oh but were we wrong. You’ll have to watch the video to learn more about our emergency landing.

We landed at Easton airport in Easton, MD after being vectored there by ATC. The guys at the airport were amazingly kind and helpful during our most stressful experience.

A big thank you goes out to all of the staff at Maryland Air for their compassion and kindness during what could have been an event with an unfortunate ending.

You can learn more about our harrowing inflight emergency over here.

More Photos From This Flight

The original post can be found on Pilot.dog.