August 27, 2025 • 39 mins
In this animal rescue podcast episode, Pilots to the Rescue shares how aviation saves shelter dogs from euthanasia and flies them into forever homes.
What if the difference between life and death for a shelter dog… was a pilot?
In this incredible episode, Em sits down with Michael Schneider, founder and “Top Dog” of Pilots to the Rescue, to celebrate 10 years of flying animals out of danger and into forever homes. Michael shares how he turned his passion for aviation into a lifesaving mission—and how one plane, one person, and one animal at a time is reshaping rescue as we know it.
🚨 In this episode, you’ll learn:
• How Pilots to the Rescue uses aviation to prevent euthanasia• What goes into planning each rescue flight—and why it matters• The emotional and logistical realities of saving lives from the sky• How you can support, volunteer, or get involved with their mission
Whether you’re a rescue advocate, a dog lover, or just love a story with heart—this one will stick with you.
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#animalrescue #dogrescueflight #pilotstotherescue #dogpodcast #rescueheroes #straightupdogtalk
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
These shelters are over Max capacity and sometimes it's the
big shelters, but a lot of timesit's those little shelters that
are packed back in the areas that nobody even knows that
those shelters are there. And so finding those relief
resources is really huge. Welcome to Straight Up Dog Talk,
(00:24):
the podcast for no topic is off limits and no pet parent feels
alone. Whether you're raising a big
feeling dog or just trying to doright by the animal in front of
you, this is your judgment free zone for real talk, real
solutions, and real stories thatremind you, you're not alone in
this. Today I'm joined by Michael
Schneider, founder, executive director and chief pilot of
Pilots to the Rescue. Known as Top Dog.
(00:45):
Michael started this nonprofit back in 2015 to combine his love
of aviation with his passion forsaving animals.
Now, 10 years later, Pilots of the Rescue has flown thousands
of at risk dogs and cats to safety, all thanks to the power
of flight and the belief that every animal deserves a second
chance. We're talking about how it all
started, the behind the scenes of what it actually takes to fly
(01:06):
animals out of danger, and what it means to turn your purpose
into real impact. Let's get into it, Michael, with
you tell everybody the background behind pilots the
rescue. Sure.
I'm the founder, executive director and chief pilot of
Pilots to Rescue. They call me top dog.
I started Pilots to Rescue back in 2015 to combine my love of
aviation, rescuing animals. So it is our 10th anniversary.
(01:29):
What we do is we use the power of flights, the power of
aviation to transport animals atrisk of being euthanized.
These are predominantly dogs andcats.
We also do endangered species like wolves and sea turtles.
We recently did some wolf hybrids and skunks and foxes and
they're municipally run shelters, usually overcrowded,
(01:49):
busting at the seams, and if we don't get them out of harm's way
quickly then unfortunately I have to euthanize.
Where do you take all of these animals?
To we're mainly on the Eastern seaboard of the United States
and the number, the biggest states that we go to are the
Carolinas and we typically bringit back to our home airport,
which is just outside of New York City.
So that's the most typical route, but we go as far as
(02:11):
Florida, Louisiana and we work with shelters in Texas.
Sometimes they they'll, they'll drive a part of the rescue and
we'll meet them in Kentucky or Tennessee.
It's definitely a team effort. We've gone as far as into
Canada, the Midwest, obviously into New England.
And so having an aircraft does help you obviously cover more,
more distances, less stressful on the animals and it's less
(02:33):
stressful on the humans that aredriving these crazy distances to
get these animals out of harm's way.
That's something that people don't always understand is yeah,
we're saving our furry friends lives, but we're also helping
out those passionate, amazing individuals, those Rd.
Warriors that are doing this dayin and day out because most
transports are done on on the ground.
And transport, it's hard to sometimes find transports,
(02:56):
right, Living just on the ground.
It's really difficult to find somebody that will drive a 36
hour stretch to move one animal one way to get it and then 36
hours back. That's a lot.
It is definitely a bonus to be able to shorten that up with
with aviation. That's really cool.
Do you know approximately how many animals you've rescued at
this point? And we've rescued over 4000, but
(03:18):
I feel like we're just getting started.
To your point, we're expanding our ground for fleets only
because aviation is crazy expensive as you can imagine and
not every rescue necessitates such an amazing resource.
We're be cognizant of donor dollars and we use the aircraft
for the high value transports orthe most at risk animals.
Especially after like disaster response.
(03:40):
We did a lot of stuff after Hurricane Helene and Milton.
We couldn't help out with the wildfires.
That's just too far. But those type of disaster
responses necessitates a plane or puppies, kittens, medical
cases. Ground transport is, is really
where we're expanding our fleet.We have a strategic plan over
the next couple of years to expand our ground transport.
Right now we have 3 vans. We're expanding to 10 because we
(04:02):
found that the transportation isthe most difficult part for a
lot of these shelters and rescuegroups to handle and we excel at
that. That's our specialty.
Even within ground transport, we're working on some programs
with big shelters, big groups tohandle that and take it off
their plate so they can focus ona spaying and neutering and
adoption and stuff like that. So to your point, it's
(04:24):
difficult. It's a big ask.
It's a big lift to ask a volunteer to drive 10 hours
through the night, drop the animals off and then come back.
It's a lot. And then you have to deal with
all the vehicles and stuff like that.
That's what we hope to provide over the next few years and grow
our transportation fleet and provide nationwide coverage
even. What do you do with the animals
once you rescue them? You You said you bring them back
(04:45):
to your home state, but where dothey go from there?
Because the shelter population crisis is everywhere.
It's a huge, huge ordeal. It's a big issue.
And I know even farther West in California and Arizona and
Alabama, Georgia, that whole area is just really saturated
all the way across. I know that everybody's kind of
struggling. So in order to relieve some of
(05:06):
that, you're moving animals to other locations.
How do you do that? Where do you redisperse them?
Whenever possible, you try to come back to our home airport.
Just visits. Less wear and tear on the plane
and it's a little bit easier. It's like a giant funnel.
It really is. There's way more sending
partners than there are receiving and that's the
difficulty. We focus on the transport.
We don't necessarily try to findreceiving shelters.
(05:27):
There's there's no secret. I mean, you can go on our
website and see all the partnersthat we work with.
We do require that they have somewhere for us to bring the
animals to 1st in order to do the transport.
You'd be surprised. Actually.
It may not surprise you, but there's just so many people
trying to save these animals. We need a place to bring them
to. You have to be creative.
For example, we found out that the Kansas City SPCA had a big
(05:52):
appetite for receiving cats. They wanted cats.
And so we transported nearly 100cats and they got them adopted
right away. You just got to find little
pockets throughout the country of places where you can bring
your animals to. You have to network.
Yeah, it helps to go to conferences and events like Best
Friends Conference or a Humane World Conference.
That's where the connections start to happen.
(06:13):
And then you develop a relationship because all the
shelters have their own requirements, transport
requirements, vaccination requirements, stuff like that.
And once you develop those relationships, then that's where
we we come in. Canada is sometimes even an
excellent place to bring animalsinto.
Obviously it's more complicated with what's going on
politically. We recently did a transport into
Canada and it was fine. It worked out.
(06:35):
Anywhere that you can, like you said, find those little pockets
of need. It's all a balancing act, right?
You know that these shelters areover Max capacity and it's
sometimes it's the big shelters,but a lot of times it's those
little shelters that are kind ofpacked back in the areas that
nobody even knows that those shelters are there.
And so finding those those relief resources is really huge.
(06:55):
And you mentioned networking, which is just kind of a huge
part of the animal community in general because we do we have to
network with each other in orderto find the right resources,
whether that's for rescuing or for learning about nutrition.
You mentioned the conferences. What kind of conferences do you
go to? And are they just rescue
conferences or are they industryconferences?
(07:16):
Explain that a little bit. A little bit of both Best
Friends a conference is excellent went to that Humane
World conference and these are networking with a little bit of
corporate brand partnerships involved.
Then there's a big pet retailingshows, which you're supposed to
have some credentials and criteria to get into, but
there's a lot of periphery events that you can even attend
(07:38):
if you're trying to network and get in front of people.
They're very heavy retail, but Ifound those to be even
beneficial, like Global Pet Expoin Orlando, Super Zoo in Las
Vegas. There's a couple others, I just
don't have the name right now. They're very industry specific,
very corporate and retails. There's not a whole lot other
than Best Friends and Humane World that I know of.
(07:59):
I'm sure they're out there. I know there's a lot of
veterinarian shows. If you're a rescue, I think the
Best Friends and Humane World isgreat place to start.
I've seen a lot of rescues go tothose and tremendous networking
and educational opportunities. And to your point earlier, if
you're a rural shelter in the middle of nowhere, you could
jump up and down as long as you want, but people may not even
know that you exist. So those are those pockets of
(08:20):
opportunities. I often send people to Petfinder
also because it's a great resource of finding partners.
Everybody says, why can't we have a supply and demand map to
show all? We could send Chihuahuas here or
German Shepherds here because obviously certain areas of the
country, I live in, Brooklyn, NY, you're probably not going to
have a lot of people wanting to adopt mastiffs and Dobermans or
(08:42):
whatever. They're not exactly apartment
dogs, Pet finders, a great placeto start.
A lot of people have tried to dothat supply and demand map, but
it's incumbent on the partners, the shelters, engaging with that
product, keeping it up to date, and they're so busy with what
they're doing. And everybody has their own
preferences about which softwarethey use.
That's why I keep coming back toPetfinder because it's a widely
used, large community engaged product.
(09:05):
If you're using it just to find out potential partners, it's
great place to start. We know from previous episodes
and other guests that Petfinder is not.
It's not Craigslist, it's not Facebook.
You have to go through a procedure in order to list those
pets and you have to have a 5013C in order to list a pet.
There's a bunch of background checks and things that actually
happen. So it's legitimate and you
(09:26):
actually know that the dog that you're getting is the dog that's
being advertised to you on thereversus whatever happens when you
go on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist.
And you don't necessarily know if that's the dog you're getting
or the puppy litter that you're getting or any of that kind of
stuff. So.
Or animal at all I. Mean, yeah.
We probably don't want to go down the rabbit hole of scams,
but we've been subject of scams,people stealing our photos and
(09:49):
pretending they're pilots to rescue and that they'll fly
their animals somewhere and people pay a whole bunch of
money and then it never shows up, that kind of stuff.
But yeah, those are unfortunate stories, but we'll keep it
positive. Oh my gosh, that's awful.
I think that it's important to mention that this stuff does
happen. Whether you're a pilot to the
rescue or you're an influencer or whatever, you have to be
(10:11):
careful because this stuff does happen.
People pretend to be you, they collect money in your name, and
then now people are upset with you and there's all kinds of
issues when there shouldn't be. I think that's that's
absolutely, absolutely insane. Recently there's a gentleman who
had a dog that passed away, Eddie and Chooch and Chooch
(10:31):
recently passed away of cancer and he had to come on in his
stories and say we do not have ago fund me.
We are not collecting money to pay for the cancer treatment
because he didn't get it. He's gone.
That is so awful that people take advantage of a situation
like that to profit from someone's loss.
That's horrendous. It sucks that that happens and I
(10:53):
I'm so sorry that that's happened to you.
It's OK. That particular case, the woman
reached out to us, we tried to help her because she lost money
and that's the unfortunate part.And she didn't get a furry
friend in the process. I'm not an advocate of
purchasing animals. I tried to tell her you can, and
this is not everybody realizes this, but you can adopt the full
breed rescue. They're out there to be patient.
(11:15):
You have to look around, but they're out there.
So maybe that's the best thing that came out of the
conversation because he was looking for a specific breed.
She was looking for a boxer and I went on Petfinder and I found
some. She had PTSD from what she went
through, but she said when the time's right, she will use a
resource like that. I said you don't need to buy a
dog. You don't need to spend 4000.
You're not showing the dog. The prices on dogs is is unreal.
(11:37):
Unfortunately. It's, it's yeah, unreal.
I am not a huge proponent of purebred dogs either because I
don't need one, right? If I was going to get a dog that
I was going to be a show dog or a service dog or something like
that, I might be a little bit more leaning towards that.
But I'm also a shop, adopt, rescue kind of girl.
All of my dogs have come out of a need to help animals in need
(11:58):
or to prevent an animal from going into a negative situation.
But a lot of people, like you said, just don't know that those
resources are out there. There's one here in Iowa that's
Golden retrievers of Iowa. You can get purebred golden
retrievers right out of the gate.
It's just an awareness thing. It really is.
So let's get back to pilots, to the rescue, and let's talk
about, tell everybody what a rescue situation looks like.
(12:21):
You mentioned before we jumped on here that you had done a
rescue in Myrtle Beach. So why don't you step us through
that and tell us how it gets started, how we get there, what
it looks like when we load up the plane, all of the all of the
details. We literally did that rescue 2
days ago. This is a partner we've worked
with on an ongoing basis. Saint Francis, this animal
shelter down in Georgetown, SC, They came to us in North Myrtle.
(12:45):
There were other partners involved.
It was 29 animals, cats and dogs.
So they're just busting at the seams.
They're municipally run sheltersthat don't have the space, and
they bring in strays and abandoned dogs and abused
animals. And it's really about making
space in their shelters so they can take in the next wave of
animals that come in, which is the unfortunate thing about this
(13:07):
vicious cycle. As soon as we take out, they're
calling us. And we got another group.
Saint Francis has a relationshipwith Mount Pleasant Animal
Shelter, which is near the airport we fly out of in New
Jersey. And we do this rescue with them.
You know, if several times throughout the year.
In this case, since there's so many animals, nearly 30.
There are 4 receiving partners in New Jersey.
(13:28):
One of them was from Pennsylvania, forget where the
other two were. So we flew down to Myrtle Beach
in the morning. It was a difficult flight
because there was a presidentialflight restriction.
Trump was in town in Bedminster,but it ended up working out.
Sometimes when you have those type of things, less people fly
other than scheduled commercial travel.
So I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to get out of
(13:50):
the New York area and open aircraft.
We had some weather considerations coming back.
The thing about the work that wedo and what makes it so
complicated is when you get intothe hotter months, the air
conditioning we have on a plane is engine driven, so we can't
keep the plane running while we load the animals.
It gets very hot. So in July and August we may not
be able to use the aircraft in missions because while you're
loading them, it can get to be over 100° in the cabin of the
(14:13):
plane before you turn the engineon.
As a matter of fact, this this particular rescue probably was
right on the edge there in termsof doing it.
So luckily nothing happened. But when we started out, the
plane I looked over the cabin was like 110° when we first
started up. I mean, it's very uncomfortable
for us too. That's just some of the
complexities when when we do this kind of work.
Whereas with the ground transport, you don't have to
(14:33):
worry about that because you canleave the engine running, the
air conditioner on, etc. So we'll probably switch more to
ground transport in those summermonths.
It was about a three hour and 15minute flight from Fairfield, NJ
down to Myrtle Beach. We went to Grand Strand Airport.
It's not the proper Myrtle Beach, it's the One North of it.
It's a little easier to get in and out of.
There's nothing wrong with Myrtle Beach International, but
when you're flying a general aviation aircraft and you fly
(14:56):
into a big commercial airport like that, it makes things a
little bit more complicated. We've done it before, but when
there's another airport just nearby that's a little less
traffic, makes it easier to get in and out.
When we got there, it was like clockwork, You know, everybody
was ready to go. We refueled, we got the plane
ready. People come by the baggage, we
load them all up. We have great pictures and
videos. We had a really nice couple.
(15:18):
This is this was a nice thing. We're all connected, right?
When you do this work, people start to come into your space.
And I don't believe in coincidences.
There are no coincidences. There was a gentleman there and
his wife that ended up making a sizeable donation and also
getting involved in loading the animals.
Guess what? He works for a company that we
used to insure the planes with. My gosh.
(15:39):
What goes around comes around. I didn't even realize that till
after he made the donation and helped us with the pets.
I asked him for his business card and I was like, oh, we used
to ensure we do. Guys, it's a small world.
There are not that many aviationinsurance brokers.
He didn't know that either. He wasn't a broker.
It's a decent sized company. That was fun.
We were on the ground for about 45 minutes between fueling,
using the restroom, loading, taking pictures, videos.
(16:03):
Then we get in the air. We do really good weight balance
calculations, but it's always exciting to see the type of
aircraft that we have, which we just got in October of last
year. It's just so capable.
Whereas before the aircraft we had before, they were on the
ground more than they were in the air.
Most of the small planes that people fly are based on 1950s
technology, if you can believe it.
(16:23):
It was difficult. We didn't really have a reliable
resource. Now we do, thanks to really
generous donors, and it was a great flight.
Going back was a little bit faster if we had a tailwind, but
we had to deal with some weather, just some storms
building. The animals pretty much just go
to sleep because it's an unpressurized aircraft and it's
not like you can fly above 8000 feet with animals because
(16:44):
they'll they'll become hypoxic. They won't be able to breathe.
And so that's our ceiling is 8000 feet.
So they naturally they get sleepy because it's less oxygen
than what they're used to. So they pretty much just go to
sleep. This crew in particular was very
easy, not no barking. Sometimes the little ones get
very yappy. You get these unusual smells
every once in a while. We call them dookies.
So you just have to deal with that with air fresheners or
(17:05):
letting some fresh air come in the cabin.
It's expected. We had such a big load this
time, so a lot of crates, unfortunately couldn't take any
of them out, which sometimes we do.
We take some of the puppies out,which is nice to play with them
while you're in flight. We just didn't have the room.
And then when we get to New Jersey, you really get to see
the transformation because when you're loading them, that's the
most stressful part of the flight.
They're coming from precarious situation.
(17:26):
Actually. I know they've never been on a
flight before. So loading them from a van into
an aircraft into these crates, it's very stressful.
And then when on the other side,sometimes they're a little timid
to come out. You have to coax them out with
treats or just take their time. But then they're very excited
and they're wagging their tails and the energy is good.
This is where they're going to be adopted by loving homes.
Animals are way more intuitive than we give them credit for.
(17:48):
I've get to witness that. That's what keeps me going.
Get to see that transformation from coming from a bad a place
to loving arms and I get to see the photos of the adopters.
We often hear that this is the best animal they've ever had and
ended up, you know, improving their life and that's that's
really what keeps me going. That's why I do it.
So it's. Incredible.
(18:08):
I love flying, but you know thisis icing on the cake.
I think flying around with with animals would be pretty neat,
just hanging out with puppies all day while you're flying
across the coastline. I'm sure that it's beautiful
too, because you're low enough that you can probably actually
see stuff and not just clouds. So well, that's that's pretty
neat. I I think that would be such a
cool experience in all takes probably.
(18:30):
You said the flight was like 3 1/4 hours, so with the loading.
Six hours, OK, probably with theloading and everything like
that. Six to seven hours, yes, call it
7 hours, 8 hours, it's a full day.
And that was sometimes we do rescues as much as 8 hours round
trip. Any time you get more than
eight, you're starting to thinking about staying overnight
just because it's exhausting. It's a lot easier to come in the
(18:53):
night before and then come back the next day.
Yeah, start fresh and maybe before it gets too hot.
Yeah, exactly. I'm the oldest pilot of the
group. Everybody else is young and
younger, I should say, and they fly for airlines or their flight
instructors. They never really complain about
the long flights. I love it.
But for me, I've been doing thisfor so long that I I can't take
(19:16):
every flight because I'm busy running the charity.
How many dogs, cats, animals, kennels can you fit onto your
plane? Well, we had 29 animals on this
particular rescue. There was some cats and the the
cats we don't trans transfer, they just stay in their same
kennel the whole time. But to answer your question, I
think we probably had about a dozen kennels.
(19:37):
We had a group of puppies, 7 puppies that cumulatively were
like 90 lbs. Then I remember a dog that was
about 55 lbs. The kennels are the limiting
factor in the size of the aircraft.
If the dog is over £80, we startthinking about tethering it.
Usually those dogs are pretty much gentle giants anyway.
We've transported mastiffs and what are those white floofy dogs
(19:58):
that are really they're very male.
Yeah, they're very malleable, you know, I remember £100 dog
and it had no problem getting inand out of whatever crate we
wanted to put him in. It's a 10 passenger aircraft, so
we could take out all the seats in the back.
And it's it's sizable. It's sizable, but it wouldn't
matter how big the aircraft is because we're unfortunately,
we're still euthanizing nearly 1,000,000 animals in the United
(20:20):
States. So even if we had a 777 plane,
it wouldn't matter. But the take away about what we
do, our mission, of course we'resaving animals, but we're
creating more awareness with this novel concept.
It's not every day you hear about someone transporting
animals on an airplane and that gets attention.
And then we have great outlets such as yours that want to cover
(20:40):
our mission and people find it interesting and it gets their
attention. And the next time they're
thinking about getting a pet, they're like, oh, let's go down
to the local shelter and adopt one this time, or let's get 2 of
them. Or maybe it's time to get a cat.
Or remember that story about that guy who was flying animals
on a on a plane? Let's get one of those little
guys. We also create a lot of
(21:01):
awareness about general aviation, which flying the plane
is such an elusive thing today. It's an amazing experience and
it's really great to expand yourmind and your capabilities to do
something like that. It's kind of like lost thing
where we used to have more people getting into aviation
personal, you know, private aviation, but it comes cost
prohibitive time, time constraints and just not
(21:23):
understanding that you can do this amazing thing.
That's a subtext to what we do, but we do end up promoting
general aviation a little bit with what we do.
I'm going to just dish for a second here because on my list
of things, if I ever can accomplish in my life, I would
love to learn how to fly a plane.
I think that it is so cool. I actually thought about going
into the Air Force when I was graduating from high school, but
(21:45):
when I found out that there was number guarantee that I would
get to learn how to fly a plane in the Air Force, I said, well,
screw that, I don't want to be. So I didn't go.
But you're right, I've looked into it multiple times.
It is very cost prohibitive. It's definitely something that I
think is really fascinating. When I'm flying, I like to be
the person that looks out the window and somebody's always
(22:05):
like, shut your blind. I'm like, no, like this is so
cool. So I've never been able to go up
in a smaller aircraft, but I think that that would be really
neat. I've also always wanted to go up
in a hot air balloon because I think that that's also really
cool. I think that it's one of the
coolest things that you could probably experience.
I've been in a helicopter one time before and being able to
learn how to do that and controlthat, that's so much freedom.
(22:27):
You're controlling this ginormous car basically that's
flying in the air. It's totally different than
driving on the road. So I think that it's really neat
what you're doing and I think that being able to take
something that's your hobby, your passion, your life's work
and turn it into something that has so much meaning is just is
just so cool When you can Conti something else like other
(22:49):
people's needs, dogs needs and helping population of animals.
What a beautiful thing. Have you written a book?
Are you thinking about writing abook?
I think you should write a book about this.
Maybe one day. My mother was an author, so you
never know. It's in the genes.
We've been pitched for a realityshow many times.
I still think that this would make an excellent show.
We have a new producer that's going to be coming up with a
(23:10):
real and pitching us, so maybe that will happen at some point.
Just a comment on what you said about the aviation thing.
I got my love of aviation from skydiving, so that was the first
time I've ever been in a small plane before.
And I just became enamored by the single pilot and all the
instrumentation and sitting on the floor of this tiny plane.
I was like, how is this happening right now?
There's just one person up therewho's flying.
(23:31):
We're going to jump out of this thing.
So after a few jumps, I asked them at the flying thing.
He pointed out jumping out of a plane is cool, but wouldn't you
want to bring your friends with you to go somewhere It's a
little bit more practical. So he encouraged me to take a
discovery flight, which there are 4000 airports across the
country, but most people only have access to 1500 of them
because of the runway length. Commercial jet or any jet for
(23:52):
that matter, pretty much needs avery long runway to take off and
land. Whereas these smaller planes see
like our plane needs 1000 feet, it's nothing.
So we have access to way more aircraft.
The point I'm trying to make is whoever's listening to this
podcast, I'm sure they know of alittle airport that's within a
few minutes drive of where they live.
At that little airport is a flight school, is an instructor.
(24:14):
You could pay a few $100 and youcan take what's called a
discovery flight. That's where you get to
experience what it's like to flyone of these little planes.
You're not going to do the take off and landing, but you could
do climbs, descends, turns and see if it's for you and and you
don't have to sign up for lessons, just see if it's for
you. But it's.
A great have to do that. That's so awesome.
I live in Iowa, so we definitelyhave some of those somewhere
(24:38):
around here. I know we do, because I know
that there are smaller airports here in Iowa, just in general.
I'm definitely gonna have to look into that because that's
just one of those things that I think would be really cool to
do, jumping out of the plane. I'm not with you on that.
I do not want to stay in the plane.
Thank you. But I could definitely fly the
plane. So you could jump out of it.
That'd be fine with that part. There you go.
(25:01):
How long have you been flying? You said you've been doing this
a long time, so how long is a long time?
About 16 years. I have about 1300 hours.
I have a commercial license. I'm instrument rated.
I was just talking to a friend the other day.
When you get to that level, there's no top to the mountain
of learning aviation. Certainly people have more
experienced than I do, but I think I'm at the point now with
(25:22):
my flying where I pick up tips and learn information from other
pilots. I get aviation magazines, I
watch the YouTube videos, but a lot of it's very repetitive or I
already know it and now it's about picking up practical tips
from people that fly corporate or every day.
And the interesting thing about that is this particular mission
I talked about, Myrtle Beach, I got to take along a guy that I
(25:42):
mentored. He was a less experienced pilot
and he used to come with me on aton of trips as a copilot and he
got to learn so much from me that it really helped him in his
aviation career. He might even admit that I'm
responsible or pilots to rescue is responsible for him getting a
corporate aviation job. And now it's sort of like
student teaching teacher becausehe came with me the other day
(26:04):
and his knowledge is so vast because he's sitting in the
plane almost every day and he's giving me little tips that were
like blowing me away. I'm like, wow, that's amazing.
I didn't think of doing that or that makes total sense or yeah,
that would I should do that nexttime.
So it's nice to give to someone and then later in life they give
back to the person that mentoredthem.
Mentorship is such a huge thing.It is.
(26:25):
It's a huge thing. I feel like that's how it works
in dog training too. And being a vet tech like, so
being a vet tech and a dog trainer, I can see where I've
mentored people or people have mentored me and I did this with
this one dog and this might helpyou.
Or I did this and this is a faster way to clip the nails or
whatever. Just a little like tips and
tricks, right? That's a huge part of just any
(26:47):
industry. And if you have people that are
willing to share that information with you, that makes
better trainers, that makes better pilots, that makes better
vet techs. A lot of people get so hung up
on being the best that they forget that giving back is is
how we build stronger groups of people in all that's phenomenal
that you have that kind of relationship with someone that
(27:08):
you mentored and now they're back into it because of you.
And how cool is that? Like, what a neat feeling to
have an effect on someone's lifethat is so positive and so
profound. You have such a good outlook on
life and bringing good messages.We said that about the TV show.
That would be my only thing thatI would be worried about is that
sometimes TV tends to put a negative spin on things, and
(27:29):
this mission is too important for that.
Like, don't. Yeah, do that.
Yeah, well, that that in the past some of those pitches, the
networks or whoever production company that's they wanted that
drama. But in this particular case,
it's the feel good stories aboutthe adopters, not Even so much
about the aviation. You can't do a whole documentary
or season or show about flying animals everywhere.
(27:49):
You have to get into the storiesabout the animals, about the
people adopting them, about their origin and what happened.
The aviation part is just to getfrom one segment to another.
The plane, it's going somewhere.Where are they going?
Who's getting picked up? It's true though, and the
stories are so important, right?That's what I like to do here is
I like to share the stories because a lot of people don't
(28:10):
realize how much goes into this stuff.
You maybe don't get into the hole where the dogs came from or
what their situations were beforehand, and you obviously
find out where they go afterwards.
But you're, you are really that in between.
You're the medium that gets themto their new life, which is a
really cool thing. And then you can check on them
from that point going forward ifyou want to.
(28:31):
But you're also there to continue to move others and you
partner with the rescues and thepeople who are adopting so that
you can save animals lives. But you don't necessarily have
to get into that nitty gritty, which can be a lot like the
rescue world is a hard place to be.
It's so sad. I think a lot of people just
feel like they're chipping away.And what are they chipping away
(28:53):
at? And so to be able to make such a
big impact is really important. Absolutely, yeah.
And even though these numbers are huge, nearly 1,000,000
animals, still they're they're improving.
It's getting better. There's more awareness going
back earlier about what I said. That's what we are.
We're a mouthpiece for these animals that have no voice.
We're a mouthpiece for the animal rescue world and how hard
(29:16):
everybody works to save as many animals as possible.
And there are haters out there. There are, I don't want to get
into into it, but they're alwaysgoing to be people that are
going to bring you down. You just have to stay focused on
your mission and while you're doing this and know that there's
going to be some transports thatyou sent out later.
Maybe that wasn't the best thing, but you have to focus on
your mission and you get the jobdone.
(29:37):
We're aligning with larger partners now when I say larger
partners like Humane World, Bissell Pet Foundation, because
they have vast resources and they do a ton of vetting.
So we know that when we do something in connection with one
of those groups that it's going to go extremely well and we're
not going to have any gotchas. All rest groups, they have huge
hearts, but it doesn't mean theynecessarily are well resourced
(29:59):
or sustainable or pulling the best animals or whatnot.
So that's come to bite us a little bit.
We can't save them all. Not every animal is worth saving
neither Even here in New York, they have the New York ACC, the
open door shelter and they euthanize there.
They can't turn down animals, but we hope that they're they're
euthanizing animals that are notadoptable, which is often the
(30:20):
case. And what's not an adoptable
animal, an animal that is aggressive animal that has a
medical issue that's been required too much money to the
fix. And of course, we want to save
them all. But you have to focus on the
animals that are adoptable. And that's really the crux of
what we do up here in the Northeast.
They really want to adopt small animals, as you can imagine.
(30:40):
You can look in the Sunday New York Times style section.
You have these women walking around with these beautiful bags
with a tiny dog in it. You know, they want the small
dog. So there's a lot of those type
of dogs coming in here. But it's all about adoptable,
like moving around where where animals will get adopted.
There's there's some horrible stories, but there's some great
uplifting ones too. That's what we're able to
(31:02):
provide because it can get very sad sometimes you feel like
we're chasing our tail and is anything going to improve these
statistics over time? But there, it's getting better.
It's going to happen. To your .1 of my mentors once
told me if you're not pissing people off, you're not doing it
right. Make change without swirling the
waters a little bit. You have to get the muck up and
clean it out in order to make effective change.
(31:24):
And unfortunately that means discovering where the rotten
parts are and repairing them. Because if you can't, you're not
effectively making change and you're not making things better
for everybody. It all comes with good and it
all comes with bad, but as long as you feel like the outcome is
positive and you're pushing towards that positive outcome,
that's really the most importantthing that you can do.
Tell me about the most beautifulending that you have seen
(31:48):
because of this. The ones that come to mind are
the animals that they've had some horrific circumstances
happen and they needed some tender love to become amazing
rescue animals. And there's one in particular
that was cat that lost its eye, got shot.
And then there's others that were set on fire.
This is the most horrific situation you could think of.
(32:09):
And then they end up getting adopted tripods that got hit by
cars. Honestly, the next time I adopt
them, I want to get one like that because I think we can
learn lessons as a human from that.
When a typical human sees someone who's disabled that you
start taking pity or feel sorry for them, but that's not what
they want. They want to be treated as an
equal and dogs, they don't even sometimes know that they have an
(32:33):
impairment like that. It's amazing to me that they
could still function. You see them hobble along those
tripods, but they're sometimes the happiest go lucky animals.
So that's the thing that sticks out in my mind the most, is they
had those worst situation possible, happy to them, and
they're so resilient and they still are able to be man's best
friend. That's a tremendous take away
(32:54):
for human beings, and it puts things in perspective.
It makes you appreciate what youhave, which is health and
happiness and love and a roof over your head.
And it makes what we complain about on a daily basis seem
seemingly small, you know? And I think this work that I do
really puts things in perspective because I see these
areas that we fly into and the animals and even the people who
(33:18):
wake up every day and they do this work.
And it makes me really feel fortunate that I get to do this,
you know, that I get to touch somany hearts.
And so those animals in particular, I think, make me
present to that. And there isn't 1 in particular.
There's so many. There's one that had cerebral
palsy and a family ended up fostering the dog indefinitely
and became a foster failure. But this is a high special needs
(33:41):
animal. When you care for a special
needs animal like that, you can't complain about anything.
You use the perfect word there too.
Resilient. Dogs and cats really are very
resilient. They bounce back from things
that we would never be able to bounce back from.
Just watching them go through some of the things that they go
through and some of the terriblethings that they experience, and
then watching them turn into these loving pets that people
(34:02):
just cherish for the rest of their lives.
It's a beautiful way to end their story, especially when
they've had years and years of maybe not great situations.
That's really cool that you're concerned about making sure that
they have a good way to end their lives.
Tell everybody how they can get a hold of you.
How can they follow you? How can they make donations?
Tell them all of things. The best way is to communicate
(34:23):
with us or make donations or follow us.
It starts with our website whichis pilots to therescue.org.
It's all spelled out pilots withan and then we're on the social
media. We focus on Facebook, Instagram.
We have a tremendous content on YouTube.
And I do believe in telling the story.
And that's something I pride ourselves on is we bring a lot
of content producers, influencers, media along on the
(34:44):
flight because you can't really experience what it's all about
on the ground. You got to come in the plane,
interact with the animals and it's really important for
getting our mission out there. I would invite people to go to
YouTube and it's all pilots to the rescue.
Facebook.com/pilots to rescueyoutube.com slash to
rescue We're always looking for volunteers.
I said the volunteers we use themost are people who are willing
(35:06):
to drive vehicles. We have a database of over 1000
pilots, but aviation, again, is very expensive.
We can't as an organization. Unfortunately, the FAA doesn't
allow us to pay a private pilot or even pay for their fuel or
renting the plane, which most ofthose volunteers are.
They have to pay out of their own pocket.
And that's why we don't have Uber in the sky.
That's a real reason. It's a safety consideration.
(35:28):
They don't want everybody just for the private license.
Start charging to transport people, though.
If you want to do that, you haveto have a certain level of
training and insurance, etcetera.
Makes our job a little harder aspilots to rescue, but as drivers
to the rescue, all you need is avehicle and I'm willing to drive
a long distance. We do have a transport board
where people can sign up as a volunteer and then when someone
(35:49):
goes on their own requests to transport, they could get
involved in that. Us as an organization, we have a
lot of internal transport that we don't put on there.
The transport port is do it yourself.
It's a newer area, yeah, of our charity.
We're hoping it continues to grow.
We don't like to say no when someone reaches out, but a lot
of those transports are, as you can imagine, they're single
(36:10):
animals. They're like all the way across
the country, provide resources for people because it's not easy
to fly with your pet today if itdoesn't fit under the seat in
front of you. If you have the financial means,
you know, those things like barkair, I don't know if you've
heard of bark Air, you could travel your pet.
It's very expensive because it is like flying private.
Another one I sometimes recommend, recommend to people a
citizen shipper where you can hire a driver to transport
(36:33):
animals that's a good resource, or just fly yourself wherever
you need to go, rent a car and drive one way.
So those are kind of the alternative resources I offered
to people when they're trying totransport an animal that they
found across the country becauseit comes out quite a bit.
It was a long winded answer about how to get involved with
the rescue. A little transport tangent
there. Transport is one of those areas
(36:54):
that we don't really talk about a whole lot and shedding some
light on it and letting people know that there are options out
there is really important because a lot of people just
don't know where to start when it comes to that.
And if they can go to Someone Like You and say, hey, we want
to get involved or we want information about this or where
would you tell us to start? Those are resources and those
(37:15):
are really important to have andthat's something that I try to
collect. We know that you can talk to the
these people about flying and you can talk to these people
about driving. And if they can't do it, they
might have another way for you to do it.
And that's just, it's a startingpoint, which is better than what
they came to me with. Again, sharing those pieces of
information are so, so, so important.
(37:36):
With that being said, what wouldyou like to leave the listeners
with today? I want to leave the listeners
with my personal experience withgetting physically involved and
giving back has my is my only explanation for countless
miracles that have come into my life.
So I would encourage people to get physically involved with
giving back about something they're passionate about South.
(37:57):
In my case, I was passionate about aviation and I loved
animals and I combined those twoloves, which had led me to get
married and have a beautiful family.
None of that stuff was possible before I did this work.
It's easy to write a check, but I would encourage people to
physically get involved. So if animals are your thing,
what does that mean? Go to your local shelter.
Take one of those animals out. You can rent a dog.
(38:17):
They have these programs here inBrooklyn.
Sean Casey, you can rescue, you can check a dog out after some
training, and you can go take the dog for a walk.
They need that kind of socialization.
You can make a difference in that dog's life.
And it could get adopted. And even if it doesn't now,
you've given it some love and that's all it wants.
And getting out of the shelter where they might have been.
We transported a dog the other day, a Pitbull that was in the
(38:39):
shelter for two years. So yeah, that's what I want to
leave is get involved about something, your passion and make
a difference and watch what happens in your life.
That's the challenge I give to all the listeners.
Really important that you do that because that's how you're
going to find fulfillment and a sense of purpose.
And I think today we're a littlebit all like a dog chasing our
tail. And at a certain point, we
(39:01):
realize like what, why am I here?
What am I supposed to do with mylife?
And that's how you're going to find it.
Give back, speak up, get involved about something you're
passionate about. Worked for me.
It's a great message and it's one that we definitely stick to
and fully encourage on this podcast.
So you guys get involved, give back and build your passions
(39:21):
into your dreams. And we will see you next week on
Straight Up Doc Talk.
These shelters are over Max capacity and sometimes it's the
big shelters, but a lot of timesit's those little shelters that
are packed back in the areas that nobody even knows that
those shelters are there. And so finding those relief
resources is really huge. Welcome to Straight Up Dog Talk,
(00:24):
the podcast for no topic is off limits and no pet parent feels
alone. Whether you're raising a big
feeling dog or just trying to doright by the animal in front of
you, this is your judgment free zone for real talk, real
solutions, and real stories thatremind you, you're not alone in
this. Today I'm joined by Michael
Schneider, founder, executive director and chief pilot of
Pilots to the Rescue. Known as Top Dog.
(00:45):
Michael started this nonprofit back in 2015 to combine his love
of aviation with his passion forsaving animals.
Now, 10 years later, Pilots of the Rescue has flown thousands
of at risk dogs and cats to safety, all thanks to the power
of flight and the belief that every animal deserves a second
chance. We're talking about how it all
started, the behind the scenes of what it actually takes to fly
(01:06):
animals out of danger, and what it means to turn your purpose
into real impact. Let's get into it, Michael, with
you tell everybody the background behind pilots the
rescue. Sure.
I'm the founder, executive director and chief pilot of
Pilots to Rescue. They call me top dog.
I started Pilots to Rescue back in 2015 to combine my love of
aviation, rescuing animals. So it is our 10th anniversary.
(01:29):
What we do is we use the power of flights, the power of
aviation to transport animals atrisk of being euthanized.
These are predominantly dogs andcats.
We also do endangered species like wolves and sea turtles.
We recently did some wolf hybrids and skunks and foxes and
they're municipally run shelters, usually overcrowded,
(01:49):
busting at the seams, and if we don't get them out of harm's way
quickly then unfortunately I have to euthanize.
Where do you take all of these animals?
To we're mainly on the Eastern seaboard of the United States
and the number, the biggest states that we go to are the
Carolinas and we typically bringit back to our home airport,
which is just outside of New York City.
So that's the most typical route, but we go as far as
(02:11):
Florida, Louisiana and we work with shelters in Texas.
Sometimes they they'll, they'll drive a part of the rescue and
we'll meet them in Kentucky or Tennessee.
It's definitely a team effort. We've gone as far as into
Canada, the Midwest, obviously into New England.
And so having an aircraft does help you obviously cover more,
more distances, less stressful on the animals and it's less
(02:33):
stressful on the humans that aredriving these crazy distances to
get these animals out of harm's way.
That's something that people don't always understand is yeah,
we're saving our furry friends lives, but we're also helping
out those passionate, amazing individuals, those Rd.
Warriors that are doing this dayin and day out because most
transports are done on on the ground.
And transport, it's hard to sometimes find transports,
(02:56):
right, Living just on the ground.
It's really difficult to find somebody that will drive a 36
hour stretch to move one animal one way to get it and then 36
hours back. That's a lot.
It is definitely a bonus to be able to shorten that up with
with aviation. That's really cool.
Do you know approximately how many animals you've rescued at
this point? And we've rescued over 4000, but
(03:18):
I feel like we're just getting started.
To your point, we're expanding our ground for fleets only
because aviation is crazy expensive as you can imagine and
not every rescue necessitates such an amazing resource.
We're be cognizant of donor dollars and we use the aircraft
for the high value transports orthe most at risk animals.
Especially after like disaster response.
(03:40):
We did a lot of stuff after Hurricane Helene and Milton.
We couldn't help out with the wildfires.
That's just too far. But those type of disaster
responses necessitates a plane or puppies, kittens, medical
cases. Ground transport is, is really
where we're expanding our fleet.We have a strategic plan over
the next couple of years to expand our ground transport.
Right now we have 3 vans. We're expanding to 10 because we
(04:02):
found that the transportation isthe most difficult part for a
lot of these shelters and rescuegroups to handle and we excel at
that. That's our specialty.
Even within ground transport, we're working on some programs
with big shelters, big groups tohandle that and take it off
their plate so they can focus ona spaying and neutering and
adoption and stuff like that. So to your point, it's
(04:24):
difficult. It's a big ask.
It's a big lift to ask a volunteer to drive 10 hours
through the night, drop the animals off and then come back.
It's a lot. And then you have to deal with
all the vehicles and stuff like that.
That's what we hope to provide over the next few years and grow
our transportation fleet and provide nationwide coverage
even. What do you do with the animals
once you rescue them? You You said you bring them back
(04:45):
to your home state, but where dothey go from there?
Because the shelter population crisis is everywhere.
It's a huge, huge ordeal. It's a big issue.
And I know even farther West in California and Arizona and
Alabama, Georgia, that whole area is just really saturated
all the way across. I know that everybody's kind of
struggling. So in order to relieve some of
(05:06):
that, you're moving animals to other locations.
How do you do that? Where do you redisperse them?
Whenever possible, you try to come back to our home airport.
Just visits. Less wear and tear on the plane
and it's a little bit easier. It's like a giant funnel.
It really is. There's way more sending
partners than there are receiving and that's the
difficulty. We focus on the transport.
We don't necessarily try to findreceiving shelters.
(05:27):
There's there's no secret. I mean, you can go on our
website and see all the partnersthat we work with.
We do require that they have somewhere for us to bring the
animals to 1st in order to do the transport.
You'd be surprised. Actually.
It may not surprise you, but there's just so many people
trying to save these animals. We need a place to bring them
to. You have to be creative.
For example, we found out that the Kansas City SPCA had a big
(05:52):
appetite for receiving cats. They wanted cats.
And so we transported nearly 100cats and they got them adopted
right away. You just got to find little
pockets throughout the country of places where you can bring
your animals to. You have to network.
Yeah, it helps to go to conferences and events like Best
Friends Conference or a Humane World Conference.
That's where the connections start to happen.
(06:13):
And then you develop a relationship because all the
shelters have their own requirements, transport
requirements, vaccination requirements, stuff like that.
And once you develop those relationships, then that's where
we we come in. Canada is sometimes even an
excellent place to bring animalsinto.
Obviously it's more complicated with what's going on
politically. We recently did a transport into
Canada and it was fine. It worked out.
(06:35):
Anywhere that you can, like you said, find those little pockets
of need. It's all a balancing act, right?
You know that these shelters areover Max capacity and it's
sometimes it's the big shelters,but a lot of times it's those
little shelters that are kind ofpacked back in the areas that
nobody even knows that those shelters are there.
And so finding those those relief resources is really huge.
(06:55):
And you mentioned networking, which is just kind of a huge
part of the animal community in general because we do we have to
network with each other in orderto find the right resources,
whether that's for rescuing or for learning about nutrition.
You mentioned the conferences. What kind of conferences do you
go to? And are they just rescue
conferences or are they industryconferences?
(07:16):
Explain that a little bit. A little bit of both Best
Friends a conference is excellent went to that Humane
World conference and these are networking with a little bit of
corporate brand partnerships involved.
Then there's a big pet retailingshows, which you're supposed to
have some credentials and criteria to get into, but
there's a lot of periphery events that you can even attend
(07:38):
if you're trying to network and get in front of people.
They're very heavy retail, but Ifound those to be even
beneficial, like Global Pet Expoin Orlando, Super Zoo in Las
Vegas. There's a couple others, I just
don't have the name right now. They're very industry specific,
very corporate and retails. There's not a whole lot other
than Best Friends and Humane World that I know of.
(07:59):
I'm sure they're out there. I know there's a lot of
veterinarian shows. If you're a rescue, I think the
Best Friends and Humane World isgreat place to start.
I've seen a lot of rescues go tothose and tremendous networking
and educational opportunities. And to your point earlier, if
you're a rural shelter in the middle of nowhere, you could
jump up and down as long as you want, but people may not even
know that you exist. So those are those pockets of
(08:20):
opportunities. I often send people to Petfinder
also because it's a great resource of finding partners.
Everybody says, why can't we have a supply and demand map to
show all? We could send Chihuahuas here or
German Shepherds here because obviously certain areas of the
country, I live in, Brooklyn, NY, you're probably not going to
have a lot of people wanting to adopt mastiffs and Dobermans or
(08:42):
whatever. They're not exactly apartment
dogs, Pet finders, a great placeto start.
A lot of people have tried to dothat supply and demand map, but
it's incumbent on the partners, the shelters, engaging with that
product, keeping it up to date, and they're so busy with what
they're doing. And everybody has their own
preferences about which softwarethey use.
That's why I keep coming back toPetfinder because it's a widely
used, large community engaged product.
(09:05):
If you're using it just to find out potential partners, it's
great place to start. We know from previous episodes
and other guests that Petfinder is not.
It's not Craigslist, it's not Facebook.
You have to go through a procedure in order to list those
pets and you have to have a 5013C in order to list a pet.
There's a bunch of background checks and things that actually
happen. So it's legitimate and you
(09:26):
actually know that the dog that you're getting is the dog that's
being advertised to you on thereversus whatever happens when you
go on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist.
And you don't necessarily know if that's the dog you're getting
or the puppy litter that you're getting or any of that kind of
stuff. So.
Or animal at all I. Mean, yeah.
We probably don't want to go down the rabbit hole of scams,
but we've been subject of scams,people stealing our photos and
(09:49):
pretending they're pilots to rescue and that they'll fly
their animals somewhere and people pay a whole bunch of
money and then it never shows up, that kind of stuff.
But yeah, those are unfortunate stories, but we'll keep it
positive. Oh my gosh, that's awful.
I think that it's important to mention that this stuff does
happen. Whether you're a pilot to the
rescue or you're an influencer or whatever, you have to be
(10:11):
careful because this stuff does happen.
People pretend to be you, they collect money in your name, and
then now people are upset with you and there's all kinds of
issues when there shouldn't be. I think that's that's
absolutely, absolutely insane. Recently there's a gentleman who
had a dog that passed away, Eddie and Chooch and Chooch
(10:31):
recently passed away of cancer and he had to come on in his
stories and say we do not have ago fund me.
We are not collecting money to pay for the cancer treatment
because he didn't get it. He's gone.
That is so awful that people take advantage of a situation
like that to profit from someone's loss.
That's horrendous. It sucks that that happens and I
(10:53):
I'm so sorry that that's happened to you.
It's OK. That particular case, the woman
reached out to us, we tried to help her because she lost money
and that's the unfortunate part.And she didn't get a furry
friend in the process. I'm not an advocate of
purchasing animals. I tried to tell her you can, and
this is not everybody realizes this, but you can adopt the full
breed rescue. They're out there to be patient.
(11:15):
You have to look around, but they're out there.
So maybe that's the best thing that came out of the
conversation because he was looking for a specific breed.
She was looking for a boxer and I went on Petfinder and I found
some. She had PTSD from what she went
through, but she said when the time's right, she will use a
resource like that. I said you don't need to buy a
dog. You don't need to spend 4000.
You're not showing the dog. The prices on dogs is is unreal.
(11:37):
Unfortunately. It's, it's yeah, unreal.
I am not a huge proponent of purebred dogs either because I
don't need one, right? If I was going to get a dog that
I was going to be a show dog or a service dog or something like
that, I might be a little bit more leaning towards that.
But I'm also a shop, adopt, rescue kind of girl.
All of my dogs have come out of a need to help animals in need
(11:58):
or to prevent an animal from going into a negative situation.
But a lot of people, like you said, just don't know that those
resources are out there. There's one here in Iowa that's
Golden retrievers of Iowa. You can get purebred golden
retrievers right out of the gate.
It's just an awareness thing. It really is.
So let's get back to pilots, to the rescue, and let's talk
about, tell everybody what a rescue situation looks like.
(12:21):
You mentioned before we jumped on here that you had done a
rescue in Myrtle Beach. So why don't you step us through
that and tell us how it gets started, how we get there, what
it looks like when we load up the plane, all of the all of the
details. We literally did that rescue 2
days ago. This is a partner we've worked
with on an ongoing basis. Saint Francis, this animal
shelter down in Georgetown, SC, They came to us in North Myrtle.
(12:45):
There were other partners involved.
It was 29 animals, cats and dogs.
So they're just busting at the seams.
They're municipally run sheltersthat don't have the space, and
they bring in strays and abandoned dogs and abused
animals. And it's really about making
space in their shelters so they can take in the next wave of
animals that come in, which is the unfortunate thing about this
(13:07):
vicious cycle. As soon as we take out, they're
calling us. And we got another group.
Saint Francis has a relationshipwith Mount Pleasant Animal
Shelter, which is near the airport we fly out of in New
Jersey. And we do this rescue with them.
You know, if several times throughout the year.
In this case, since there's so many animals, nearly 30.
There are 4 receiving partners in New Jersey.
(13:28):
One of them was from Pennsylvania, forget where the
other two were. So we flew down to Myrtle Beach
in the morning. It was a difficult flight
because there was a presidentialflight restriction.
Trump was in town in Bedminster,but it ended up working out.
Sometimes when you have those type of things, less people fly
other than scheduled commercial travel.
So I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to get out of
(13:50):
the New York area and open aircraft.
We had some weather considerations coming back.
The thing about the work that wedo and what makes it so
complicated is when you get intothe hotter months, the air
conditioning we have on a plane is engine driven, so we can't
keep the plane running while we load the animals.
It gets very hot. So in July and August we may not
be able to use the aircraft in missions because while you're
loading them, it can get to be over 100° in the cabin of the
(14:13):
plane before you turn the engineon.
As a matter of fact, this this particular rescue probably was
right on the edge there in termsof doing it.
So luckily nothing happened. But when we started out, the
plane I looked over the cabin was like 110° when we first
started up. I mean, it's very uncomfortable
for us too. That's just some of the
complexities when when we do this kind of work.
Whereas with the ground transport, you don't have to
(14:33):
worry about that because you canleave the engine running, the
air conditioner on, etc. So we'll probably switch more to
ground transport in those summermonths.
It was about a three hour and 15minute flight from Fairfield, NJ
down to Myrtle Beach. We went to Grand Strand Airport.
It's not the proper Myrtle Beach, it's the One North of it.
It's a little easier to get in and out of.
There's nothing wrong with Myrtle Beach International, but
when you're flying a general aviation aircraft and you fly
(14:56):
into a big commercial airport like that, it makes things a
little bit more complicated. We've done it before, but when
there's another airport just nearby that's a little less
traffic, makes it easier to get in and out.
When we got there, it was like clockwork, You know, everybody
was ready to go. We refueled, we got the plane
ready. People come by the baggage, we
load them all up. We have great pictures and
videos. We had a really nice couple.
(15:18):
This is this was a nice thing. We're all connected, right?
When you do this work, people start to come into your space.
And I don't believe in coincidences.
There are no coincidences. There was a gentleman there and
his wife that ended up making a sizeable donation and also
getting involved in loading the animals.
Guess what? He works for a company that we
used to insure the planes with. My gosh.
(15:39):
What goes around comes around. I didn't even realize that till
after he made the donation and helped us with the pets.
I asked him for his business card and I was like, oh, we used
to ensure we do. Guys, it's a small world.
There are not that many aviationinsurance brokers.
He didn't know that either. He wasn't a broker.
It's a decent sized company. That was fun.
We were on the ground for about 45 minutes between fueling,
using the restroom, loading, taking pictures, videos.
(16:03):
Then we get in the air. We do really good weight balance
calculations, but it's always exciting to see the type of
aircraft that we have, which we just got in October of last
year. It's just so capable.
Whereas before the aircraft we had before, they were on the
ground more than they were in the air.
Most of the small planes that people fly are based on 1950s
technology, if you can believe it.
(16:23):
It was difficult. We didn't really have a reliable
resource. Now we do, thanks to really
generous donors, and it was a great flight.
Going back was a little bit faster if we had a tailwind, but
we had to deal with some weather, just some storms
building. The animals pretty much just go
to sleep because it's an unpressurized aircraft and it's
not like you can fly above 8000 feet with animals because
(16:44):
they'll they'll become hypoxic. They won't be able to breathe.
And so that's our ceiling is 8000 feet.
So they naturally they get sleepy because it's less oxygen
than what they're used to. So they pretty much just go to
sleep. This crew in particular was very
easy, not no barking. Sometimes the little ones get
very yappy. You get these unusual smells
every once in a while. We call them dookies.
So you just have to deal with that with air fresheners or
(17:05):
letting some fresh air come in the cabin.
It's expected. We had such a big load this
time, so a lot of crates, unfortunately couldn't take any
of them out, which sometimes we do.
We take some of the puppies out,which is nice to play with them
while you're in flight. We just didn't have the room.
And then when we get to New Jersey, you really get to see
the transformation because when you're loading them, that's the
most stressful part of the flight.
They're coming from precarious situation.
(17:26):
Actually. I know they've never been on a
flight before. So loading them from a van into
an aircraft into these crates, it's very stressful.
And then when on the other side,sometimes they're a little timid
to come out. You have to coax them out with
treats or just take their time. But then they're very excited
and they're wagging their tails and the energy is good.
This is where they're going to be adopted by loving homes.
Animals are way more intuitive than we give them credit for.
(17:48):
I've get to witness that. That's what keeps me going.
Get to see that transformation from coming from a bad a place
to loving arms and I get to see the photos of the adopters.
We often hear that this is the best animal they've ever had and
ended up, you know, improving their life and that's that's
really what keeps me going. That's why I do it.
So it's. Incredible.
(18:08):
I love flying, but you know thisis icing on the cake.
I think flying around with with animals would be pretty neat,
just hanging out with puppies all day while you're flying
across the coastline. I'm sure that it's beautiful
too, because you're low enough that you can probably actually
see stuff and not just clouds. So well, that's that's pretty
neat. I I think that would be such a
cool experience in all takes probably.
(18:30):
You said the flight was like 3 1/4 hours, so with the loading.
Six hours, OK, probably with theloading and everything like
that. Six to seven hours, yes, call it
7 hours, 8 hours, it's a full day.
And that was sometimes we do rescues as much as 8 hours round
trip. Any time you get more than
eight, you're starting to thinking about staying overnight
just because it's exhausting. It's a lot easier to come in the
(18:53):
night before and then come back the next day.
Yeah, start fresh and maybe before it gets too hot.
Yeah, exactly. I'm the oldest pilot of the
group. Everybody else is young and
younger, I should say, and they fly for airlines or their flight
instructors. They never really complain about
the long flights. I love it.
But for me, I've been doing thisfor so long that I I can't take
(19:16):
every flight because I'm busy running the charity.
How many dogs, cats, animals, kennels can you fit onto your
plane? Well, we had 29 animals on this
particular rescue. There was some cats and the the
cats we don't trans transfer, they just stay in their same
kennel the whole time. But to answer your question, I
think we probably had about a dozen kennels.
(19:37):
We had a group of puppies, 7 puppies that cumulatively were
like 90 lbs. Then I remember a dog that was
about 55 lbs. The kennels are the limiting
factor in the size of the aircraft.
If the dog is over £80, we startthinking about tethering it.
Usually those dogs are pretty much gentle giants anyway.
We've transported mastiffs and what are those white floofy dogs
(19:58):
that are really they're very male.
Yeah, they're very malleable, you know, I remember £100 dog
and it had no problem getting inand out of whatever crate we
wanted to put him in. It's a 10 passenger aircraft, so
we could take out all the seats in the back.
And it's it's sizable. It's sizable, but it wouldn't
matter how big the aircraft is because we're unfortunately,
we're still euthanizing nearly 1,000,000 animals in the United
(20:20):
States. So even if we had a 777 plane,
it wouldn't matter. But the take away about what we
do, our mission, of course we'resaving animals, but we're
creating more awareness with this novel concept.
It's not every day you hear about someone transporting
animals on an airplane and that gets attention.
And then we have great outlets such as yours that want to cover
(20:40):
our mission and people find it interesting and it gets their
attention. And the next time they're
thinking about getting a pet, they're like, oh, let's go down
to the local shelter and adopt one this time, or let's get 2 of
them. Or maybe it's time to get a cat.
Or remember that story about that guy who was flying animals
on a on a plane? Let's get one of those little
guys. We also create a lot of
(21:01):
awareness about general aviation, which flying the plane
is such an elusive thing today. It's an amazing experience and
it's really great to expand yourmind and your capabilities to do
something like that. It's kind of like lost thing
where we used to have more people getting into aviation
personal, you know, private aviation, but it comes cost
prohibitive time, time constraints and just not
(21:23):
understanding that you can do this amazing thing.
That's a subtext to what we do, but we do end up promoting
general aviation a little bit with what we do.
I'm going to just dish for a second here because on my list
of things, if I ever can accomplish in my life, I would
love to learn how to fly a plane.
I think that it is so cool. I actually thought about going
into the Air Force when I was graduating from high school, but
(21:45):
when I found out that there was number guarantee that I would
get to learn how to fly a plane in the Air Force, I said, well,
screw that, I don't want to be. So I didn't go.
But you're right, I've looked into it multiple times.
It is very cost prohibitive. It's definitely something that I
think is really fascinating. When I'm flying, I like to be
the person that looks out the window and somebody's always
(22:05):
like, shut your blind. I'm like, no, like this is so
cool. So I've never been able to go up
in a smaller aircraft, but I think that that would be really
neat. I've also always wanted to go up
in a hot air balloon because I think that that's also really
cool. I think that it's one of the
coolest things that you could probably experience.
I've been in a helicopter one time before and being able to
learn how to do that and controlthat, that's so much freedom.
(22:27):
You're controlling this ginormous car basically that's
flying in the air. It's totally different than
driving on the road. So I think that it's really neat
what you're doing and I think that being able to take
something that's your hobby, your passion, your life's work
and turn it into something that has so much meaning is just is
just so cool When you can Conti something else like other
(22:49):
people's needs, dogs needs and helping population of animals.
What a beautiful thing. Have you written a book?
Are you thinking about writing abook?
I think you should write a book about this.
Maybe one day. My mother was an author, so you
never know. It's in the genes.
We've been pitched for a realityshow many times.
I still think that this would make an excellent show.
We have a new producer that's going to be coming up with a
(23:10):
real and pitching us, so maybe that will happen at some point.
Just a comment on what you said about the aviation thing.
I got my love of aviation from skydiving, so that was the first
time I've ever been in a small plane before.
And I just became enamored by the single pilot and all the
instrumentation and sitting on the floor of this tiny plane.
I was like, how is this happening right now?
There's just one person up therewho's flying.
(23:31):
We're going to jump out of this thing.
So after a few jumps, I asked them at the flying thing.
He pointed out jumping out of a plane is cool, but wouldn't you
want to bring your friends with you to go somewhere It's a
little bit more practical. So he encouraged me to take a
discovery flight, which there are 4000 airports across the
country, but most people only have access to 1500 of them
because of the runway length. Commercial jet or any jet for
(23:52):
that matter, pretty much needs avery long runway to take off and
land. Whereas these smaller planes see
like our plane needs 1000 feet, it's nothing.
So we have access to way more aircraft.
The point I'm trying to make is whoever's listening to this
podcast, I'm sure they know of alittle airport that's within a
few minutes drive of where they live.
At that little airport is a flight school, is an instructor.
(24:14):
You could pay a few $100 and youcan take what's called a
discovery flight. That's where you get to
experience what it's like to flyone of these little planes.
You're not going to do the take off and landing, but you could
do climbs, descends, turns and see if it's for you and and you
don't have to sign up for lessons, just see if it's for
you. But it's.
A great have to do that. That's so awesome.
I live in Iowa, so we definitelyhave some of those somewhere
(24:38):
around here. I know we do, because I know
that there are smaller airports here in Iowa, just in general.
I'm definitely gonna have to look into that because that's
just one of those things that I think would be really cool to
do, jumping out of the plane. I'm not with you on that.
I do not want to stay in the plane.
Thank you. But I could definitely fly the
plane. So you could jump out of it.
That'd be fine with that part. There you go.
(25:01):
How long have you been flying? You said you've been doing this
a long time, so how long is a long time?
About 16 years. I have about 1300 hours.
I have a commercial license. I'm instrument rated.
I was just talking to a friend the other day.
When you get to that level, there's no top to the mountain
of learning aviation. Certainly people have more
experienced than I do, but I think I'm at the point now with
(25:22):
my flying where I pick up tips and learn information from other
pilots. I get aviation magazines, I
watch the YouTube videos, but a lot of it's very repetitive or I
already know it and now it's about picking up practical tips
from people that fly corporate or every day.
And the interesting thing about that is this particular mission
I talked about, Myrtle Beach, I got to take along a guy that I
(25:42):
mentored. He was a less experienced pilot
and he used to come with me on aton of trips as a copilot and he
got to learn so much from me that it really helped him in his
aviation career. He might even admit that I'm
responsible or pilots to rescue is responsible for him getting a
corporate aviation job. And now it's sort of like
student teaching teacher becausehe came with me the other day
(26:04):
and his knowledge is so vast because he's sitting in the
plane almost every day and he's giving me little tips that were
like blowing me away. I'm like, wow, that's amazing.
I didn't think of doing that or that makes total sense or yeah,
that would I should do that nexttime.
So it's nice to give to someone and then later in life they give
back to the person that mentoredthem.
Mentorship is such a huge thing.It is.
(26:25):
It's a huge thing. I feel like that's how it works
in dog training too. And being a vet tech like, so
being a vet tech and a dog trainer, I can see where I've
mentored people or people have mentored me and I did this with
this one dog and this might helpyou.
Or I did this and this is a faster way to clip the nails or
whatever. Just a little like tips and
tricks, right? That's a huge part of just any
(26:47):
industry. And if you have people that are
willing to share that information with you, that makes
better trainers, that makes better pilots, that makes better
vet techs. A lot of people get so hung up
on being the best that they forget that giving back is is
how we build stronger groups of people in all that's phenomenal
that you have that kind of relationship with someone that
(27:08):
you mentored and now they're back into it because of you.
And how cool is that? Like, what a neat feeling to
have an effect on someone's lifethat is so positive and so
profound. You have such a good outlook on
life and bringing good messages.We said that about the TV show.
That would be my only thing thatI would be worried about is that
sometimes TV tends to put a negative spin on things, and
(27:29):
this mission is too important for that.
Like, don't. Yeah, do that.
Yeah, well, that that in the past some of those pitches, the
networks or whoever production company that's they wanted that
drama. But in this particular case,
it's the feel good stories aboutthe adopters, not Even so much
about the aviation. You can't do a whole documentary
or season or show about flying animals everywhere.
(27:49):
You have to get into the storiesabout the animals, about the
people adopting them, about their origin and what happened.
The aviation part is just to getfrom one segment to another.
The plane, it's going somewhere.Where are they going?
Who's getting picked up? It's true though, and the
stories are so important, right?That's what I like to do here is
I like to share the stories because a lot of people don't
(28:10):
realize how much goes into this stuff.
You maybe don't get into the hole where the dogs came from or
what their situations were beforehand, and you obviously
find out where they go afterwards.
But you're, you are really that in between.
You're the medium that gets themto their new life, which is a
really cool thing. And then you can check on them
from that point going forward ifyou want to.
(28:31):
But you're also there to continue to move others and you
partner with the rescues and thepeople who are adopting so that
you can save animals lives. But you don't necessarily have
to get into that nitty gritty, which can be a lot like the
rescue world is a hard place to be.
It's so sad. I think a lot of people just
feel like they're chipping away.And what are they chipping away
(28:53):
at? And so to be able to make such a
big impact is really important. Absolutely, yeah.
And even though these numbers are huge, nearly 1,000,000
animals, still they're they're improving.
It's getting better. There's more awareness going
back earlier about what I said. That's what we are.
We're a mouthpiece for these animals that have no voice.
We're a mouthpiece for the animal rescue world and how hard
(29:16):
everybody works to save as many animals as possible.
And there are haters out there. There are, I don't want to get
into into it, but they're alwaysgoing to be people that are
going to bring you down. You just have to stay focused on
your mission and while you're doing this and know that there's
going to be some transports thatyou sent out later.
Maybe that wasn't the best thing, but you have to focus on
your mission and you get the jobdone.
(29:37):
We're aligning with larger partners now when I say larger
partners like Humane World, Bissell Pet Foundation, because
they have vast resources and they do a ton of vetting.
So we know that when we do something in connection with one
of those groups that it's going to go extremely well and we're
not going to have any gotchas. All rest groups, they have huge
hearts, but it doesn't mean theynecessarily are well resourced
(29:59):
or sustainable or pulling the best animals or whatnot.
So that's come to bite us a little bit.
We can't save them all. Not every animal is worth saving
neither Even here in New York, they have the New York ACC, the
open door shelter and they euthanize there.
They can't turn down animals, but we hope that they're they're
euthanizing animals that are notadoptable, which is often the
(30:20):
case. And what's not an adoptable
animal, an animal that is aggressive animal that has a
medical issue that's been required too much money to the
fix. And of course, we want to save
them all. But you have to focus on the
animals that are adoptable. And that's really the crux of
what we do up here in the Northeast.
They really want to adopt small animals, as you can imagine.
(30:40):
You can look in the Sunday New York Times style section.
You have these women walking around with these beautiful bags
with a tiny dog in it. You know, they want the small
dog. So there's a lot of those type
of dogs coming in here. But it's all about adoptable,
like moving around where where animals will get adopted.
There's there's some horrible stories, but there's some great
uplifting ones too. That's what we're able to
(31:02):
provide because it can get very sad sometimes you feel like
we're chasing our tail and is anything going to improve these
statistics over time? But there, it's getting better.
It's going to happen. To your .1 of my mentors once
told me if you're not pissing people off, you're not doing it
right. Make change without swirling the
waters a little bit. You have to get the muck up and
clean it out in order to make effective change.
(31:24):
And unfortunately that means discovering where the rotten
parts are and repairing them. Because if you can't, you're not
effectively making change and you're not making things better
for everybody. It all comes with good and it
all comes with bad, but as long as you feel like the outcome is
positive and you're pushing towards that positive outcome,
that's really the most importantthing that you can do.
Tell me about the most beautifulending that you have seen
(31:48):
because of this. The ones that come to mind are
the animals that they've had some horrific circumstances
happen and they needed some tender love to become amazing
rescue animals. And there's one in particular
that was cat that lost its eye, got shot.
And then there's others that were set on fire.
This is the most horrific situation you could think of.
(32:09):
And then they end up getting adopted tripods that got hit by
cars. Honestly, the next time I adopt
them, I want to get one like that because I think we can
learn lessons as a human from that.
When a typical human sees someone who's disabled that you
start taking pity or feel sorry for them, but that's not what
they want. They want to be treated as an
equal and dogs, they don't even sometimes know that they have an
(32:33):
impairment like that. It's amazing to me that they
could still function. You see them hobble along those
tripods, but they're sometimes the happiest go lucky animals.
So that's the thing that sticks out in my mind the most, is they
had those worst situation possible, happy to them, and
they're so resilient and they still are able to be man's best
friend. That's a tremendous take away
(32:54):
for human beings, and it puts things in perspective.
It makes you appreciate what youhave, which is health and
happiness and love and a roof over your head.
And it makes what we complain about on a daily basis seem
seemingly small, you know? And I think this work that I do
really puts things in perspective because I see these
areas that we fly into and the animals and even the people who
(33:18):
wake up every day and they do this work.
And it makes me really feel fortunate that I get to do this,
you know, that I get to touch somany hearts.
And so those animals in particular, I think, make me
present to that. And there isn't 1 in particular.
There's so many. There's one that had cerebral
palsy and a family ended up fostering the dog indefinitely
and became a foster failure. But this is a high special needs
(33:41):
animal. When you care for a special
needs animal like that, you can't complain about anything.
You use the perfect word there too.
Resilient. Dogs and cats really are very
resilient. They bounce back from things
that we would never be able to bounce back from.
Just watching them go through some of the things that they go
through and some of the terriblethings that they experience, and
then watching them turn into these loving pets that people
(34:02):
just cherish for the rest of their lives.
It's a beautiful way to end their story, especially when
they've had years and years of maybe not great situations.
That's really cool that you're concerned about making sure that
they have a good way to end their lives.
Tell everybody how they can get a hold of you.
How can they follow you? How can they make donations?
Tell them all of things. The best way is to communicate
(34:23):
with us or make donations or follow us.
It starts with our website whichis pilots to therescue.org.
It's all spelled out pilots withan and then we're on the social
media. We focus on Facebook, Instagram.
We have a tremendous content on YouTube.
And I do believe in telling the story.
And that's something I pride ourselves on is we bring a lot
of content producers, influencers, media along on the
(34:44):
flight because you can't really experience what it's all about
on the ground. You got to come in the plane,
interact with the animals and it's really important for
getting our mission out there. I would invite people to go to
YouTube and it's all pilots to the rescue.
Facebook.com/pilots to rescueyoutube.com slash to
rescue We're always looking for volunteers.
I said the volunteers we use themost are people who are willing
(35:06):
to drive vehicles. We have a database of over 1000
pilots, but aviation, again, is very expensive.
We can't as an organization. Unfortunately, the FAA doesn't
allow us to pay a private pilot or even pay for their fuel or
renting the plane, which most ofthose volunteers are.
They have to pay out of their own pocket.
And that's why we don't have Uber in the sky.
That's a real reason. It's a safety consideration.
(35:28):
They don't want everybody just for the private license.
Start charging to transport people, though.
If you want to do that, you haveto have a certain level of
training and insurance, etcetera.
Makes our job a little harder aspilots to rescue, but as drivers
to the rescue, all you need is avehicle and I'm willing to drive
a long distance. We do have a transport board
where people can sign up as a volunteer and then when someone
(35:49):
goes on their own requests to transport, they could get
involved in that. Us as an organization, we have a
lot of internal transport that we don't put on there.
The transport port is do it yourself.
It's a newer area, yeah, of our charity.
We're hoping it continues to grow.
We don't like to say no when someone reaches out, but a lot
of those transports are, as you can imagine, they're single
(36:10):
animals. They're like all the way across
the country, provide resources for people because it's not easy
to fly with your pet today if itdoesn't fit under the seat in
front of you. If you have the financial means,
you know, those things like barkair, I don't know if you've
heard of bark Air, you could travel your pet.
It's very expensive because it is like flying private.
Another one I sometimes recommend, recommend to people a
citizen shipper where you can hire a driver to transport
(36:33):
animals that's a good resource, or just fly yourself wherever
you need to go, rent a car and drive one way.
So those are kind of the alternative resources I offered
to people when they're trying totransport an animal that they
found across the country becauseit comes out quite a bit.
It was a long winded answer about how to get involved with
the rescue. A little transport tangent
there. Transport is one of those areas
(36:54):
that we don't really talk about a whole lot and shedding some
light on it and letting people know that there are options out
there is really important because a lot of people just
don't know where to start when it comes to that.
And if they can go to Someone Like You and say, hey, we want
to get involved or we want information about this or where
would you tell us to start? Those are resources and those
(37:15):
are really important to have andthat's something that I try to
collect. We know that you can talk to the
these people about flying and you can talk to these people
about driving. And if they can't do it, they
might have another way for you to do it.
And that's just, it's a startingpoint, which is better than what
they came to me with. Again, sharing those pieces of
information are so, so, so important.
(37:36):
With that being said, what wouldyou like to leave the listeners
with today? I want to leave the listeners
with my personal experience withgetting physically involved and
giving back has my is my only explanation for countless
miracles that have come into my life.
So I would encourage people to get physically involved with
giving back about something they're passionate about South.
(37:57):
In my case, I was passionate about aviation and I loved
animals and I combined those twoloves, which had led me to get
married and have a beautiful family.
None of that stuff was possible before I did this work.
It's easy to write a check, but I would encourage people to
physically get involved. So if animals are your thing,
what does that mean? Go to your local shelter.
Take one of those animals out. You can rent a dog.
(38:17):
They have these programs here inBrooklyn.
Sean Casey, you can rescue, you can check a dog out after some
training, and you can go take the dog for a walk.
They need that kind of socialization.
You can make a difference in that dog's life.
And it could get adopted. And even if it doesn't now,
you've given it some love and that's all it wants.
And getting out of the shelter where they might have been.
We transported a dog the other day, a Pitbull that was in the
(38:39):
shelter for two years. So yeah, that's what I want to
leave is get involved about something, your passion and make
a difference and watch what happens in your life.
That's the challenge I give to all the listeners.
Really important that you do that because that's how you're
going to find fulfillment and a sense of purpose.
And I think today we're a littlebit all like a dog chasing our
tail. And at a certain point, we
(39:01):
realize like what, why am I here?
What am I supposed to do with mylife?
And that's how you're going to find it.
Give back, speak up, get involved about something you're
passionate about. Worked for me.
It's a great message and it's one that we definitely stick to
and fully encourage on this podcast.
So you guys get involved, give back and build your passions
(39:21):
into your dreams. And we will see you next week on
Straight Up Doc Talk.
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