The nonprofit organization Wings of Rescue is getting a bunch of attention online today: the Associated Press reports how the group connects airplane pilots willing to volunteer their services to fly dogs and cats otherwise headed "to sleep" to homes ready to adopt the pets in nearby areas.



The pilots provide a critical service during a time when many animal shelters are strugggling to maintain funding, and available space to keep incoming abandoned animals is ever more scarce.

From the Wings of Rescue website:

Dogs of all ages including pregnant dogs and their newborn puppies – spend their last day in a shelter and are euthanized simply due to lack of space. Too many dogs, not enough homes. We work every day to change that by providing desperately needed air transport for our rescue partners and the thousands of animals they save each year from high kill shelters in California. We fly these precious passengers in private airplanes to their new forever homes and rescue organizations up and down the west coast in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and even Canada. We are the only all-volunteer organization to fly this number of pets to safety. We not only transport healthy dogs and cats but pregnant moms/moms with newly born babies/dogs with recent surgeries or animals in need of major surgical procedures. Ground transport is not the best option for these animals due to the sheer length of the road trip which can be in excess of 24 hours in the same crate without any food, water or walks. Most of our flights are completed in 3-4 hours. Our work is funded completely from donations, the incredible generosity of our volunteer pilots and their planes and hundreds of rescue organizations up and down the West Coast.





[via Laughing Squid]