Dog Is My Copilot: Rescue Tales of Flying Dogs, Second Chances, and the Hero Who Might Live Next Door by Patrick Regan

Author:Patrick Regan [Regan, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781449407605
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Published: 2012-06-18T14:00:00+00:00

Rescuer Tina Khan says good-bye to Chance in Gardner, Kansas.

She and Todd drove the dog back to the vet clinic, where, despite the patient’s fighting spirit, they received the same unwelcome advice—put the dog to sleep. “I said, ‘Absolutely not,’” recalls Khan. “Not an option. We’re not going to euthanize him because he’s paralyzed. He’ll be a wonderful, adoptable dog. To survive something like that . . . my God, if he survived trying to be eliminated by a train, who am I to not give him a chance?”

Three days of care later—including treatment of a cracked skull, sinus blood clots, multiple cuts and scrapes on his head, neck, and face, and a full exam of his nonworking hindquarters, the dog was ready for release. Khan was there to pick him up and take him home. Up until then, he had been referred to simply as “the train dog.” Khan signed him out of the clinic as “Chance.” “He didn’t need to be reminded of that,” she says.

Chance spent several weeks in Khan’s home, where he was made welcome by her four resident dogs. His condition steadily improved, and he kept up surprisingly well, pulling himself by his muscular upper body, dragging his back legs behind. But Khan knew he needed a home where he could receive more care and therapy—and she needed to free up her foster space for other hard-luck cases at the shelter—so after two months or so, she started looking to place Chance in a forever home.

This is the story of three determined women, two caring pilots, and one incredibly tough dog. The second woman in the story lives in Adel, Iowa, some three hundred miles from Tina Khan’s home in Kansas. The two have never met personally, but they are kindred spirits in the sense that they each dedicate a large percentage of their waking hours (and disposable income) to help dogs in need.

Amy Heinz is the founder and president of AHeinz57 Pet Rescue and Transport, located about thirty miles west of Des Moines. Heinz got into the animal-transport “business” accidentally about five years ago after volunteering to drive two homeless rat terriers from her local shelter to an animal rescue in Minneapolis. Since that time, her organization—like Khan’s, a 501(c)(3) registered charity with an all-volunteer staff—has become a vital link in the transport network that moves rescue animals across the country. “Because of our location, we’re actually a hub of transport,” she says. “Dogs go east and west and north and south, and I-35 and I-80 intersect right here.” Little did she know when she moved from California to Iowa in 2005 that she’d wind up right in the middle of things.

Heinz, a single mother, runs her expanding operation from her home on a small acreage. In the early years, she used her garage as a kennel. While animal transport has always been her primary objective, there are invariably those dogs that need a temporary home until a permanent one can be located. She’s

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