Dogs flown to Vermont looking to find their forever homes

MORRISVILLE, Vt. (WCAX) - New dogs are nearly ready for adoption in Lamoille County after being flown to the Green Mountains over the weekend from a kill shelter down south.

“We are tasked with the responsibility of making sure they are cared for,” said Jamie Dutil with North Country Animal League in Morrisville.

Caring for animals is exactly what the League and Pilots and Paws did. The two nonprofits banded together to bring three dogs -- Phantom, Tyler, and Star --back from North Carolina. The dogs were removed from kill shelters by the SPCA and were sent north to find new homes.

Dutil says it’s been a long time coming. “It is an idea that we sort of always wanted to entertain. The shelter is only half a mile from the airport. So, it is a resource that we feel like we should use, and it really sort of fell into place this time,” she said.

Ryan Bliss has been a volunteer for Pilots and Paws for a couple of years. The nonprofit’s mission is to provide a safe environment in which volunteers can come together and arrange the rescue flights. He says the majority of the dogs he picks up are from kill shelters, which are common in the South. Being a dog lover himself, he wanted to do something to help. “There’s a huge supply of dogs that are being killed in shelters that need to go to non-kill shelters. But fewer and fewer sites are having people come in and adopt dogs. If you can take these cats and dogs to your shelters, we can really help them out a lot,” Bliss said.

The pilot for this run, Toby Schine, said this was also his first time bringing the dogs to their new home. “There were two other pilots that flew today to get these dogs from North Carolina. So we decided on an airport to meet up at. I just love that there’s such a community of people who are taking care of these animals who really need it,” said Schine.

The dogs will remain at the North Country Animal League until they get a health check Tuesday. If all goes well, they should be up for adoption by that afternoon.

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