The Dog Bucket Brigade — volunteering in dog rescue transport

By Joan Purk, Technology Agreement Manager, Crop Science

People are spending more time at home now because of COVID-19 restrictions, and as a result, pet adoptions and fostering have gone up significantly. Animal shelters are emptying out, which is a good thing, but people still want to adopt and are waiting for available animals. How do dogs get to rescue organizations and eventually into loving homes?

One way is that people like me drive dogs around the country, moving them to rescue organizations that have room or have people willing to foster dogs.

I volunteer as a dog rescue transporter. I have driven about 4,000 dogs since I started in 2011. It’s a labor of love for me and purely voluntary. I used to make the drives with my mom, to give her something to do and spend time together. She would call me up and say, “Let’s go get some dogs!” Sadly, she passed away about a year ago, but I’m still on the road, doing my part to get dogs to people who will love them. My motto is, “If they have a place to go, we’ll get them there.”

My first dog was a puppy from a pet store at the mall. Then I learned about the terrible conditions at so-called “puppy mills,” commercial dog breeding facilities churning out puppies for profit to supply pet stores. These often inhumane operations ignore the needs of the animals in their care, focusing purely on rapid breeding for more money. After learning that, I only adopted rescue dogs from shelters. I also fostered a few, giving them care and love while they were waiting for their “forever home.”

Eventually I started looking to do more than rescuing and fostering to help. In 2011, a friend called and asked if I would be willing to transport a dog. At the time I didn’t realize that dogs are driven from my state of Missouri, which is unfortunately the puppy mill capital of the U.S., all over the country to smaller rescue groups that have space, foster organizations and even to adopters who are waiting for them. It’s like a dog bucket brigade: one driver will take dogs on part of the journey, usually 100 miles one way, and then hand off their passengers to the next driver. It’s volunteer work, so most transporters drive on weekends, and on any given Saturday, about 1,000 people are driving dogs all over the country. Every state has a dog rescue transport Facebook page, where transporters can see where pick-ups and drop-offs are needed.

I drive for several groups including Paws on Wheels, that moves dogs from Oklahoma to Wisconsin and Minnesota; and Bootheel Paws Express, moving dogs out of southeast Missouri to rescues in the St. Louis area as well as Illinois and Wisconsin.

Because the need is so great, I try to get as many crates in my car as possible — I call it Transport Tetris when I’m loading up for a ride. It’s a challenge to see how many crates I can fit: my record is 20 dogs/puppies on one trip in my RAV4!

In addition to drivers, pilots (called Pilots n Paws) move dogs, using their own airplanes that can take one to five doggie passengers over a lot more distance quickly. Sometimes I meet these canine passengers at small airports and start the rest of their journey on the road.

I’ve put a lot of miles on that RAV4, but it’s worth it to know that I’m helping get dogs into loving homes and bringing a little joy to both the animals and their new people.