Amelia Patrons for Animal Welfare

TONY THE HOMELESS HOUND
FLIES THE FRIENDLY SKIES
An exciting new program called Pilots N Paws made it possible for a second homeless hound dog from Amelia County to fly to a new home in Cincinnati, Ohio, recently. Thanks to the generosity of pilots and plane owners, homeless animals in shelters all over the United States are receiving a second chance by being flown from areas with too many pets to places where there are new homes waiting to welcome them. Huckleberry, Amelia’s first homeless hound rescued through this program, was flown to Ohio in December 2009.
Tony’s story began in January when he arrived at the Amelia County Animal Shelter. Dedicated volunteer rescue workers who toil tirelessly to save the animals that end up at the Amelia shelter began the task of trying to find Tony a new home. Hounds are a dime a dozen in rural southern areas so Tony’s best chance was to be sent north where strict spay/neuter laws have created a desire for more dogs.
First Tony went to a foster home with Amelia Patrons for Animal Welfare (APAW) member Kriss Parrott and her family in Jetersville where he ended up spending 5 months (!) while he had dental work, was neutered and received his necessary vaccines – all paid for by generous donors. In addition Cindy Case, another APAW volunteer and shelter worker, took Tony to Richmond for treatments to cure his heartworm disease. Finally, on Sunday, June 20th, Cindy transported Tony to Lynchburg where he boarded a plane bound for Cincinnati, Ohio, and Emily Gear with Louie’s Legacy Rescue. Following is an excerpt from an e mail that Cindy received from the pilot Jason after the trip on which he was accompanied by his girlfriend Heidi Birnbaum:
Hello,
Well I am glad to report that we had a great trip back with Tony! Although I did have to make the decision to fly lower coming home because of the winds aloft, which made it a pretty bumpy ride back. That didn’t sit too well with Heidi, but let me tell you that Tony did just great with it! He was an absolute pleasure to fly with for the entire 2 hour and 45 minute trek home. He slept for most of the way, despite the bumps, and he never got up or moved around at all except to reposition himself to get more comfortable. I could not have asked for a better dog, especially being out of the crate. He could have been a real problem not being restrained, but he was not AT ALL! In fact, he did better than our own hound would do unrestrained in the back seat! So please feel good in knowing that he was SUCH a good boy. And when we finally arrived, he ran straight to Emily as if he knew her and was very happy and excited. She fed him a bowl of food and he devoured it instantly, and he ate a Milk Bone, then he hopped in her SUV and off they went!
It was a great experience for Heidi and I and a great feeling to know that I could help save a dog’s life, and to help you and Emily, who have given so much, and whoever decides to give Tony a forever home. It gives me a sense of purpose for taking a plane up and going flying, other than just for my own personal enjoyment. I will most definitely be doing more rescue flights like yesterday’s trip.
Sincerely,
Jason and Heidi
What a heartwarming story More information on this exciting animal rescue program can be found at www.pilotsnpaws.org. which is intended to be a meeting place for those who rescue, shelter or foster animals, and pilots and plane owners willing to assist with the transportation of animals.

As promised, all old pages have been quickly added so the information will at least be published. Some links may be missing or broken, and they will be updated as soon as possible. The front page will be a place for all APAW news, and I will figure out how to get the message board back as soon as I figure out the hosting problem. In the meantime, all the information and forms are at least here. Things will slowly change and update as I find the time, and as the APAW members start to edit and build onto the information that is already here.

I know that people are disappointed that the retrofitting of the old website is taking so long.
But the fact of the matter is that building websites from the ground up takes a tremendous amount of time and effort. It doesn’t help that revisiting old work makes my fingers itch to rework bits of the code to make it run smoother. In addition to all that, I’m also working with an alien creature (WordPress) that I do not fully understand, and trying to find a new free-hosting or low-cost service to run the website at the same time. There are so many little details I want to include in the retrofit, but I’m not sure how to work those into this new system. Graphics need to be redone, PDFs need to be optimized, and a new file sharing system needs to be utilized among other things. This all takes a great amount of time I just do not have in ample supply. When I originally started this conversion, I gave myself a year to complete it knowing my limits.

But that is too lengthy of a deadline. So I have started putting up skeleton pages so there will at least be something on this website. There will be broken or missing links as I do not have the time to format them correctly and put them up in a timely manner. I will try to get one set of pages done per day until all the skeleton pages are up. I also did a quick theme change to make it easier to navigate the site. I hope this will suffice until I can write the code for an APAW-specific theme. Then I will turn over the site to APAW so they make edit to their hearts’ content without worry.