Author: Emma Kronish

By Meredith Ayan, Executive Director

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Lori Kirshner, host of Animals Today Radio about SPCA International’s programs. In our discussion, we covered Operation Baghdad Pups: Worldwide, a recent rescue flight that brought 47 animals belonging to U.S. servicemen and women from Iraq to NYC.

Animals Today covers all things related to animals worldwide, with an emphasis on their welfare and is a great source of information for animal lovers everywhere. Check out the podcast to hear me discuss our rescue flight, as well as additional animal news.

By Meredith Ayan, Executive Director

I think we are all in agreement that 2020 has already been quite a year. In January, I expected a year that would be much like 2019, just with a stronger ability to reach more animals in need. As always, we budgeted and planned for disaster response, but I had no idea how much of our efforts would be focused on disasters this year.

Here at SPCA International, we are always ready to respond quickly when our partners experience disasters. In past years we have provided emergency funding to rescue and care for animals from areas affected by forest fires, hurricanes and erupting volcanoes, but nothing comes close to the response of 2020.

Early in the year, we mobilized to provide support to organizations in Australia that were on the front lines of actively rescuing kangaroos and other native animals from the bushfires. Funds provided food, water, burn care, rehabilitation and long-term support for animals injured, displaced and struggling to survive in smoldering forests.  

Just months later, COVID-19 quickly became a supply chain crisis for many of our partner organizations. They struggled to locate and purchase kibble for the animals in their care. In some cases, financial support helped them buy and store enough food to last the length of lockdowns and in one instance a rescue group purchased a kibble making machine. 

More recently, we provided support to our partners in Beirut as they responded to the massive explosion there. Funds have helped them locate and care for stray animals and lost pets, many of whom were injured in the blast and subsequent destruction.

Now, as we head into the final quarter of the year, I hope disasters are few and far between, but if disaster does strike, we will be ready. SPCA International exists to leverage the generosity of many to provide the support small animal welfare organizations need. We will continue to respond swiftly and strongly when our partners need help in the wake of disasters.

Thank you to everyone who supports our work. YOU make it possible to respond when disaster strikes and animals are in need. 

By Meredith Ayan, Executive Director

After months of planning it was such a relief to see our plane full of rescued dogs and cats touch down at JFK last week. Each animal had been rescued by a service member months earlier, before life was so drastically altered by COVID-19.

The animals had made the long journey from Iraq, with 6 hours of load-in time, and 13 hours of flight time. The plane arrived in NYC at just about 2 am. Our team members, partners and volunteers were there to greet the dogs as they bounded down the steps of the plane, and took their first steps on US soil. The cats remained safely in their carriers and each animal was given a health check-up and monitored during their short stay before continuing onto their forever homes across the country.

The next morning our call time was 4 am and I was was fortunate to get a short night’s sleep before joining Pilot Julian from Pet Rescue Pilots for a trip along the Eastern United States to deliver seven dogs and three cats to their homes. I had expected a noisy plane with anxious animals, but the pilots assured me the animals would simply sleep once we were at cruising altitude. Amazingly, they all travelled peacefully and slept, exactly as the pilots said they would.

Without Pet Rescue Pilots’ help, it would have taken us weeks to coordinate these reunions through ground transport and commercial airlines. They made over a dozen stops over the next few days, delivering more cats and dogs to their families that anxiously awaited them. Typically, this amazing organization transports animals from high-euthanasia areas to shelters that have more space in different parts of the country. So, while they are absolute experts at transporting pets, they had never made a trip quite like this before.

Our journey down the East Coast was a truly incredible experience. After about an hour of load in, we taxied out at 7 a.m. and by 11 p.m. we were back in New York after delivering nine animals to six different locations where service men and women along with their families excitedly reunited with their pets. There were so many smiles and tears of joy. It was a truly incredible day.

Fitting 10 animals, 2 pilots and one passenger on a Cessna aircraft is a big like playing a high stakes game of Tetris. Our biggest dog, Feral Bueller, was in such a large crate that we couldn’t get it on the Pet Rescue Flight plane. The experienced pilots took this in stride and allowed Feral Bueller to sit by my side, right behind them. He behaved amazingly well in the air, disembarked at each stop with us, and charmed each and every member of the ground crews at every airport.

You might remember Feral Bueller. We told you about this sweet boy who was found with a gunshot injury to his leg in early 2020. By March, he was recovered and ready to travel to the U.S., but the air space in Iraq closed just days before he was scheduled to leave. His journey home to his adopter was drawn out and complicated, but he was finally reunited with his Dad at our very last stop of the day in Alabama.

I had been involved with Feral Bueller’s rescue since we first heard about him being shot, so getting him home filled my heart with joy and closed a chapter on the incredible work of many people who helped him get there.

You may have also noticed that I mentioned starting the day with ten animals, but only delivering nine. We returned back to New York with Shakira the cat, whose owner was unable to meet us before we had to fly on to our next stop. On our return trip, we let Shakira roam the plane because she needed time out of her crate, and just as the rest of the animals had travelled so well, Shakira peacefully gazed out the window. Shakira was reunited with her owner a few days later and she’s happily settled into her new life.

Once again, this successful day of happy reunions was made possible through our partnership with Pet Rescue Pilots and the many people who donated for these pets’ care while they were stuck overseas and their trips home.

Our team here at SPCA International will be keeping in touch with the soldiers and we are looking forward to sharing updates about these rescue pets with you soon.

By Meredith Ayan, Executive Director

When life as we knew it began to grind to a halt in March, I was naive to how long this situation would last. I thought perhaps a few weeks or months of social distancing would slow COVID-19 enough for the world to resume a semblance of normalcy.

By May it became apparent that we would need to make changes to the way we accomplish our work here at SPCA International. With no commercial flights between Iraq and the U.S. and our kennels and foster homes in Iraq full of waiting dogs and cats, our team started to think outside the box. Our incredible Operation Baghdad Pups: Worldwide team came up with a solution – a special rescue flight just for the dogs and cats of U.S. service members.

We were a bit skeptical at first. I wondered if it could really work. We asked for quotes from numerous airlines, and in the end, only one company said they could do it. Our initial flight date was changed multiple times due to unforeseen red tape, but our team’s resolve never wavered. Days and nights were filled with international WhatsApp messages, phone calls to government agencies, charter companies, pilots and so on.

Our Iraq based team members graciously completed and submitted all the paperwork with the new flight date for each and every animal, even while navigating COVID-19 restrictions to care for and maintain the socialization of the animals in the program.

On the day of the flight, our team expected to drive a truck full of crated animals onto the tarmac and load them onto the airplane, but all was not as expected. The airport would not allow the truck onto the tarmac and only granted authorization for two people to load the animals.

The SPCA International team took this in stride. They planned to have most of the team members stay with the animals on the truck while the two authorized individuals moved animals to the airplane. However, they were presented with another challenge.

Due to airport restrictions, only two members of our team were allowed on the tarmac. Coupled with a steep set of stairs leading to a narrow passenger door this created a whole new set of challenges with the load in.

Because of the size of the cabin door, almost every dog had to be removed from their crate, and while the dog waited on a leash, the crate had to be disassembled outside the airplane then reassembled on the airplane before the dog could be reloaded. The two authorized team members did this over and over until every dog was loaded. The entire process took over six hours on a 110 degree tarmac.

Writing this, the thought of their dedication still brings tears to my eyes. They could have so very easily given up and decided the effort wasn’t worth it, but they persevered to get each and every animal on the airplane and on their way to the U.S.

The original landing time of the plane was 4 pm ET at JFK. After a lengthened load-in time, the arrival was pushed back to 2 am ET. Our entire dedicated New York team all made the choice to be there to greet the dogs and cats after their long journey. I am celebrating my 10^th anniversary at SPCAI this year, and after 1,000 rescues, the sight of the plane taxiing up to the drop off point still gave me goosebumps and a familiar lump in my throat.

Thankfully, every animal made it to JFK safe and healthy. For more details about the final leg of their journeys, see my next blog entry – Operation Baghdad Pups: Worldwide Rescue Flight Behind the Scenes – New York to Home.

By Meredith Ayan, Executive Director

SPCA International works to build strong partnerships with organizations doing important animal welfare work around the globe. This model brings strength to our sector and increases our impact. I am thrilled to announce a new partnership with Animal Wellness Action on a new campaign Kangaroos Are Not Shoes! This vital advocacy effort calls for ending the use of kangaroo leather in shoe manufacturing. I invite all animal welfare advocates to sign the petition and join us as we raise our voices for the protection of kangaroos.

The following Q&A is a conversation I had with Wayne Pacelle, the founder of Animal Wellness Action, about our work in Australia and the new partnership between our organizations.

Wayne Pacelle: We’ve had so much alarming news in the last six months, and it seems that the cataclysmic fires that burned Australia during its summer are a fading memory.  The infernos had enormous effects across the continent, including on its animals.  One scientist said that more than a billion animals perished.  But the underlying causes of the fires are still there, and we may see more of these macro-ecological disasters, including in Australia again.  What do you say to animal advocates who don’t consider climate change an animal welfare issue?

Meredith Ayan: Climate change is undeniably a huge issue for wildlife. On both land and sea, it creates habitat loss, causes massive declines in animal populations, disturbs ecosystems, and increases the likelihood of disasters like this year’s catastrophic fires in Australia, which killed more than a billion animals. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is also a sobering example of the impacts of climate change. High ocean temperatures stemming from climate change have destroyed much of the reef, displacing its animal inhabitants. To seriously address animal welfare, we must also seriously address climate change.

Wayne Pacelle: When we respond to disasters as they are occurring, we cannot turn off climate change — we just don’t have those kinds of tools.  But it is not impossible to help the victims of climate change, and that’s exactly what SPCA International did.  Tell us a little bit about your response on the ground and your efforts to help orphaned kangaroos.

Meredith Ayan: We are firm believers in supporting and partnering with local animal organizations domestically and worldwide to increase our collective impact for animals. In Australia, through the generosity of our supporters, we deployed much-needed aid to the vulnerable wildlife of Western Australia through grants to several partner organizations, including Wildlife Care WA Inc., Friends of the Western Ground Parrot, and Bluebush Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation. These organizations are true experts in the areas in which they work and the animals that they serve and so, our goal was to provide them with funding to carry out and expand the important work they were already doing.

Our local partners on the ground reported that many kangaroos perished trying to escape from the fires while others survived but were left starving and dehydrated with burns on their feet and tails. Countless young animals, including kangaroo joeys, were orphaned. Our grant to Bluebush Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation specifically supported the organization’s care and treatment of orphaned and injured joeys. Every rescued joey must be specially rehabilitated and released back into the wild, which can take about 18 months per animal. With Bluebush’s monitoring coverage area spanning a million acres, Bluebush had dozens of rescued joeys in their care during the fires and found themselves at capacity. We’re thrilled that our grant allowed them to expand and accept more joeys by fencing a new two-acre area and by supporting the cost of two much-needed water tanks.

Through our grant to Wildlife Care Western Australia, we supported the purchase of two mobile water tanks and generators, and food supplies. This group covers hundreds of miles per week refilling wildlife food and water stations, for Australia’s iconic wildlife like kangaroos, on an all-volunteer basis. 

Wayne Pacelle: Now you are joining the Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action in its “Kangaroos Are Not Shoes” campaign to get the major athletic shoe companies to stop sourcing kangaroo skins for their shoes.  What is that?

Meredith Ayan: The “Kangaroos Are Not Shoes” campaign is about raising awareness of a shocking but little-known animal welfare issue: the commercial killing of millions of wild kangaroos each year in their native habitats, largely for the sake of using their skin to craft soccer cleats. Nike and Adidas have been manufacturing “k-leather” soccer shoes for years, and Nike, specifically, has been caught illegally selling and delivering these shoes to California residents.

We at SPCA International and many other caring organizations and volunteers have worked hard to rescue and rehabilitate kangaroos – a fascinating and beloved Australian national icon – after this year’s devastating bushfires. It would be tragic for these animals to be released back into the wild simply to be swept up in a mass cull and made into soccer cleats and yet, at the moment, we know that this is a risk.

I think of Clover, a seven-month-old, orphaned joey, whom our partners found malnourished, dehydrated and burned. Seeing her recovery gave me hope amid overwhelming heartbreak as the fires took so many animal lives. We cannot allow joeys like Clover to be turned into shoes, and we’re glad to join advocates like the Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action to speak out for kangaroos.

Wayne Pacelle: In getting to know you and the work of SPCA International, it’s clear that you have a collaborative philosophy when it comes to dealing with other groups.  That’s logical to me, but many other groups have a hyper-competitive attitude toward animals.  Why do you embrace other groups and join with them in so many efforts?

Meredith Ayan: Partnering with other organizations is fundamental to our approach. We see our work as complementary and believe that we can further our missions together, by sharing our learnings and resources with fellow animal advocates.SPCA International supports animal welfare efforts all over the world through financial grants that fund animal rescue programs, provide crucial veterinary supplies, and education initiatives. Our support builds the capacity and reach of grassroots organizations working to improve the lives of animals across the globe, to help as many animals as possible. We are dedicated to these partner organizations and to each and every donor that makes our work possible. This approach has dramatically increased the worldwide impact we’ve had for animals, including in Australia and other parts of the globe. There is certainly enough work to go around and by working together we are making each other stronger and better and, ultimately, saving more lives.