By Lori Kalef, SPCA International Staff
The answer to that is way too many to count on two hands! Over the last few months, our team has been hard at work with OBP:Worldwide rescue missions for American military personnel serving around the globe. In fact, in the span of one month, we reunited 7 dogs from 3 different countries with their beloved humans!
While the logistics, planning and routing can often be very challenging for every country, Iraq continues to be the most challenging of all. With ISIS threatening the borders and checkpoints, and military and security personnel unable to leave their posts, let alone walk outside the parameters of their base, our team has learned how to get really creative.
This last mission featuring two female dogs, Patches and Lil Runt, were no exception to the rule. It came down to the final 24 hours to get them safely transported outside their gates where they have been living with their security personnel family for the last few months. After many phone calls, several hundred emails, over two dozen people on the ground and two companies who handed off the dogs in tandem, they made it safely to Erbil to meet our team member who rushed them to the ministry to get their export paperwork finalized, literally in the nick of time.
It’s incredible to see and feel the support and effort that so many people are willing to offer for the fate of two beautiful dogs who would otherwise be subject to an awful fate. The bond between human and dog that is created over a short period of time while our brave Americans are serving our country is what makes these rescue missions so enormously rewarding.
Patches and Lil Runt made it safely to the U.S. this past weekend and had the chance to rest up over night and have a bath and some much deserved R&R before they made their final leg of the journey to their separate forever homes with the families who fell in love with them in Iraq.
Welcome home Baghdad Pups!
