Flight of Love

On Feb. 14, 430 cats and dogs left Memphis to new owners and homes in a Valentine’s Day “Flight of Love,” courtesy of Wings of Rescue, a nonprofit organization that flies pets from overpopulated areas to communities where the pet overpopulation problem has been mostly eliminated.

It’s Wings of Rescue’s second visit to the Mid-South in less than a month, after winging away another 100 animals in January to the Northwest. Tuesday’s flight will take the animals to Washington, Idaho, California and upstate New York.

“We’re again here because they needed to go, the shelters are full, and they are in absolute dire need of being saved,” said Yehuda Netanel, co-founder of Wings of Rescue.

And, as the developer of Lakeland’s The Lake District, Netanel said, he also has a commitment to the Memphis community. With four airplanes, including the one Netanel flies for Wings of Rescue, the cost for Tuesday’s jaunt cost about $50,000 — or around $100 an animal, he said.

In January Wings of Rescue flew more than 100 animals to waiting homes in the Northwest, where spay/neuter regulations and other factors have nearly eliminated the stray population there.

The animals have come from the DeSoto County Animal Shelter; the Hernando Animal Shelter; the Humane Society of the Delta in Helena, Arkansas; Memphis Animal Services; and the West Memphis Animal Shelter.

The receiving shelters are all no-kill shelters, and the animals are expected to have homes by the weekend, Netanel said.

The next flight for pets from Memphis will be sometime in the spring, but the date has not been set.

It’s “fantastic” for the Memphis Animal Shelter, which shipped out 25 dogs and 18 cats to areas where people will be lined up at the shelters ready to adopt, said Alexis Pugh, MAS director.

Recently, Pugh spoke with the director of the Chemung County Humane Society & SPCA in New York to get a sense of where the animals from MAS are going.

“Their adoption gallery for dogs is empty. They have zero dogs. So we’re about to fill up their adoption gallery for available pets,” Pugh said.

MAS releases about 6,000 animals a year, including adoptions and those returned to owners.

But for many of the small shelters, this one day is equivalent to months of adoptions.

The Hernando Animal Shelter is open by appointment only and adopts about 200 animals a year, said director Susan Huff.

“If we got one adopted a day it would be great, but truth be told, we get about three adopted a month,” Huff said.

That some parts of the country have few stray animals while other parts have so many speaks to many things.

“It’s just all about spay/neuter and humane education. We need to do a better job of helping people keep pets in their homes and not in the shelters,” she said.

The DeSoto County shelter shipped 48 animals in January and another 53 last Tuesday.

“This is what we would do all month,” said director Monica Mock. “It’s very nice to move that many animals in one day, especially during the slow time of the year.”

People want puppies, so in April and May they’ll come in for the young animals, but not many people are adopting the adult dogs and cats at the shelter.

“That’s why this is such a wonderful opportunity for us,” Mock said.