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Look What Hurricane Harvey Blew In
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Wednesday, October 11, 2017
 

STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Listen closely and you can detect a bit of a Texan drawl in Indy’s woof.

Cassy, meanwhile, likes her kibbles barbecued with a touch of hickory smoked flavoring.

These are two of the 10 dogs and cats who were blown to the Wood River Valley by Hurricane Harvey.

The four-legged victims of the hurricane had to endure a couple extra days in the famous Texas humidity after windy conditions grounded the plane that brought them here. But anything that was still wet behind the ear from Houston’s flooding has dried out in Idaho’s high desert air.

These pets are now ready to belly up to a Sun Valley winter. And they’re anxious to find forever homes in the Gem State.

“I’ll always make room for these dogs and cats,” said Connie Koonce, who supervises the kennel at the Animal Shelter of the Wood River Valley.

Cassy is an 8-month-old lab female mix with a brown brindle coat coloring pattern on her body. Indy is a year-old Australian cattle dog mix.

The dogs and their co-horts were flown to Hailey this weekend by Dog Is My CoPilot. They had been in a shelter in Houston when Hurricane Harvey struck and were taken to San Antonio where San Antonio Pets Alive made room for them until they could be transported to shelters like the Wood River Valley’s.

Houston shelters transferred the dogs and cats they had been sheltering to make room for people’s pets who were lost or abandoned during Hurricane Harvey, which flooded 40,000 homes. The hope is that  families will be able to reunite with them at the Houston shelters, said Bekka Mongeau, the Wood River Valley Animal Shelter’s marketing director.

San Antonio Pets Alive took in 250 animals displaced by Hurricane Harvey and workers there have spent the past few weeks coordinating transfers to other shelters.

Dog Is My CoPilot, a nonprofit animal air rescue organization based in Jackson, Wyo., loaded Cassy and the others into a Cessna 208B that held nothing but crates full of dogs and cats. In addition to their stop here, the pilots delivered 26 cats and dogs to the Idaho Humane Society in Boise. They continued on to the Animal Adoption Center of Jackson, Wyo., and One Tail at A Time, in Portland, Ore.

Dog Is My CoPilot has saved rescued more than 2,500 during the past year and more than 7,600 animals in the past five years.

“Every animal we transport saves two; the one that we transport and the one that takes it place,” said Peter Rork, president and chief pilot of the organization.

Once they touched down, the 10 dogs and cats coming to Sun Valley got their vaccines and underwent medical exams looking for heartworm and other problems.

Cassy, who has a white patch on her belly, is spayed and Indy is neutered, which means they’re already available for adoption.

A couple other dogs have kennel cough but are expected to be ready to go by this weekend. One is being held a little longer for behavioral modification work.

“The work is about giving second chances to these animals,” said Nadia Novik, director of Shelter Outreach at the Animal Shelter of the Wood River Valley. “With everyone teaming together we are able to give some support and relief to Texas while they are still recovering from the storm and help find these animals a new home.”

The animal shelter west of Hailey in Croy Canyon currently has 33 dogs—it can take 40.

This past month it brokered a record 70 dog and cat adoptions.

Its goal is adopting out 645 cats and dogs for the year. So far, it has adopted out 475. Last year it adopted out 629 animals--404 dogs, 224 cats and one bunny.

The shelter expects to get another batch of dogs and cats from New Mexico next week.

The animal shelter first began rescuing dogs from areas hit by disaster when a group of volunteers commandeered a van and took it down to New Orleans to rescue dogs displaced during Hurricane Katrina.

“We’ve been taking pets from shelters that were full or distressed on a more organized basis for three years now, but this is the first time we’ve had cats flown here,” said Bekka Mongeau, the shelter’s marketing coordinator.

“People come from all over—Canada, Virginia, Boston, Mass.; Seattle, Portland, California, Montana—to adopt. Some are people who fall in love with an animal while vacationing here. Others see one of our animals on social media. Or, they come because they’ve heard we’re a good shelter to adopt pets from.”

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