A dog named Bubbles and nineteen of his fellow chihuahuas on Tuesday boarded a flight from Los Angeles to Houston, where they are now up for adoption. The airlift is part of an animal shelter’s program to send surplus dogs from California to other parts of the country to be adopted by owners who might otherwise turn to puppy mills.

Bubbles is the 500th chihuahua to be transported by The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Los Angeles (spcaLA) as part of the Air Chihuahua program.



The group created the program in 2009 because of a large supply of chihuahuas in the Los Angeles area, where more than 60,000 chihuahuas are registered. That year, animal rescue centers in California reported a spike in the number of abandoned chihuahuas.



While looking for a way to deal with the problem, spcaLA president Madeline Bernstein heard from shelters across the US that there was a high demand for chihuahuas and other small dogs. In those communities, people would instead turn to puppy mills and adoption websites to get special order small breeds.



“If we were The Gap and we had pink blouses out here that didn’t sell and you had pink blouses selling out in Miami, you wouldn’t make more pink blouses, you would ship the ones from one store to the other,” said Bernstein. ”The more I thought about it, the more I thought maybe if we could start doing that, then people wouldn’t be as inclined to order a little dog over the internet or order a little dog from a puppy mill breeder or find a little dog in a pet shop.”

Bernstein said that the popularity of chihuahuas and other small dogs was bred years ago after celebrities like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears paraded their tiny dogs in front of the paparazzi.

“All of a sudden it became really clear, for some deranged reason, that because of the celebrity factor and the film industry and everything, this [small dogs] seems to be the need,” said Bernstein. “So, if we’ve got them, we should make sure other people are able to get them.”

The first Air Chihuahua flight took place on New Years Eve 2009 and brought a batch of chihuahuas from Los Angeles to Denver, Colorado, where every dog was immediately adopted.

The donor-driven program has also brought surplus chihuahuas to New York, Washington, Florida and Canada.

Air Chihuahua dogs have been flown on special charter flights, in climate-controlled cabins and in crates below seats in the main cabin of passenger jets.

United Airlines sponsored the Houston-bound canines’ flight in a special climate-controlled area that is frequently used for animal transport, which abides by a “last on, first off” directive.

More chihuahuas are set to be shipped out on a 30 September flight to Miami, Florida.