Crate after crate, almost 160 local dogs boarded a flight to their new home in the Garden State.
Because of shelter overcrowding, adoptable dogs and cats are at risk of being euthanized nationwide.
Wings of Rescue flew homeless dogs Friday morning from the McComb-Pike County Airport to New Jersey, giving them a second chance at being adopted.
“Freekibble Flight to Freedom” is funded by GreaterGood.org in partnership with Freekibble.
“There’s a definite disparity, so we always fly north,” Wings of Rescue president and CEO Ric Browde said. “The red states do a horrible job. It’s just very sad to say, but if you’re a red state, you probably don’t have anti-breeding restrictions, you have lots of problems with fighting dogs.”
Local shelter partners included McComb Animal Shelter, Southern Pines Animal Shelter and Clarksdale Animal Rescue Effort and Shelter. The receiving shelter is St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center in New Jersey.
“There’s not enough homes here and Wings of Rescue has avenues to get them adopted very quickly, whereas they languish in our shelters here because of the pet overpopulation problem,” said McComb Animal Shelter manager Michelle Lombas.
Approximately 40 animals came through the McComb Animal Shelter to be transported to New Jersey.
“The importance of that is there’s only 12 cage spaces at the shelter that we have, so the only way we can make the transport of that many animals is because generous people have fostered those animals that we could not house due to limited space,” Lombas said.
Browde said Mississippi needs a better education system and better animal protection laws to help at-risk pets.
“These heroic shelters like McComb and Southern Pines are just left with the debris of failed human errors and it’s just very sad that that happens,” he said.“We just need people to realize that it’s not just dogs and cats being euthanized. That’s your tax money being wasted to kill pets. You should be horrified by that if you can’t conceive the actual karmic disasters that are being fostered.”
In addition to flying pets from overcrowded shelters to ones with empty kennel space, Wings of Rescue also saves pets that have been displaced by disasters.
McComb Animal Shelter volunteer Shannon Regan said she wanted to be involved with the “Freekibble Flight to Freedom” because she loves helping animals and there was a need.
“There’s way more coming in than they have space for,” she said. “They need loving homes and this is a way to give them a great home.”
