Dunkin’s Texas to Florida Journey

Dunkin as a 4.5 lb Chihuahua that was a stray picked up on the street of Mesquite TX homeless and with a large "mass" hanging from his stomach area. He was taken to the local Animal Control facility and he was put on the website in case his owners were looking for him (which was kind of unlikely as he was in very poor condition - bad teeth, ear infections, long nails, dirty, and desperately needing vet care for his large mass). A friend of Annette, a volunteer at Get A Life Pet Rescue (GALPR) - a non-profit No-Kill Small Dog Rescue in Plantation FL that has saved 100's of dogs from euthanasia, saw his info/pic and posted it on a national Chihuahua Meetup.com website asking "Can someone help this little guy?". Another member of the group knew that Annette has a special place in her heart for Chihuahuas and asked her to check out this Chihuahua's situation and see if there was anything she could do.

Annette looked up the Chihuahua's info and since she had recently acquired over 900+ rescue friends on Facebook (which has become a great tool for animal rescue networking) she decided to post this Chihuahua's pic/info to her wall in hopes that a TX or a surrounding area rescue might be able to save this little guy. Instead to her surprise, her local FL friends started offering to pay for this guy's transport to FL and his surgery expenses (so GALPR could get him the operation he needs) and even to be his foster mom once he is here. Annette decided to contact the Mesquite TX Animal Control to find out if they would allow her to "pull" this Chihuahua and get him transported to FL. The Animal Control officer was willing to allow this (because his adoption chances looked really dim) and this started the wheels in motion. Annette found another Meetup friend who lived in Dallas who could pull him from Animal Control, get a Texas vet to certify him healthy for travel and temporarily foster him in Dallas until travel arrangements could be made. This MeetUp member is aslo a foster mom for Chihuahua Rescue & Transport! She and another Facebook friend then contacted Pilot N Paws and started the process of registering Dunkin's case so he would eligible to travel via this wonderful network of volunteer pilots from TXto FL.

Luckily after many phone, email, Meetup and Facebook communications all the arrangements have been made and Dunkin is due to fly into to Ft. Laud Executive Airport via private plane on Thursday morning and go into foster care with a GALPR volunteer/foster mom. He will be met at the airport by Annette, Stacy, the rescue coordinator for GALPR, and possibly some other GALPR volunteers.

Thank you all for taking the time to listen to Dunkin's story (so far) and I hope you are willing to tell others what great animal rescue tools (like Meetup, Facebook, Pilot N Paws, etc.) there are out there that can be used to get more animals on Death Row saved before it is too late for these poor souls.