Transport Tales: (ePub)

My name is Teresa Cash and I live in Bowling Green, Kentucky. About seventeen years ago, I became a transport driver for our local Humane Society. I drive homeless pets wherever they need to go, in-state or, more often than not, to Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York City. These pets go to rescue groups who sponsor them and then adopt them out to new families, or they go straight to their new adopters. The internet has been wonderful for animal rescue. There is a site called "Petfinder.com" and most every shelter in the country has a page on this site. People looking for pets can go to that site and can see what animals are in each shelter, starting closest to your zip code, or you can do a more specialized search, looking for a certain breed, young or older, male or female, housebroken or not, etc. We carefully screen the rescues we work with. I'm a bit of an insomniac, so driving long distances is easy for me. The northern states have much better and stronger spay/neuter laws on the books than we do, so they do not have the pet overpopulation that is so prevalent in the southern states. If you want to adopt in the north, the shelters aren't overflowing with lots of animals, so you put in a request and/or you work with a rescue group to find the pet that fits your family. These groups then go to Petfinder, look to see what animals we have available and they then match their adopters with animals from our shelters. All animals that go on our transports are fully vetted, altered and certified healthy on transport week. On our very first transport, we took ten dogs to Maryland in the back of a little Nissan pickup truck and we couldn't believe our luck that a rescue was willing to take TEN dogs. These days, I don't hit the road with less than 90+ animals in our shelters 26' box truck (the big truck) or 40+ pets in a cargo van. I drive a rented cargo van one weekend, with animals from multiple shelters on board, then the following weekend, I drive the big truck for the Bowling Green-Warren Co. Humane Society. The third weekend is my weekend off, usually. We move 2500-3000 animals per year, animals that once would have been euthanized in our shelters because there weren't enough adopters and there just wasn't room for them all. We love saving lives and that is always our goal when creatures come into our shelter. Over the years, I've moved dogs, cats, bunnies, guinea pigs, hamsters, mice, gerbils, degus, birds, ferrets and even the occasional pot-bellied pig. I've delivered puppies on the road multiple times, when new mommas couldn't wait until the trip was over. I drive in all kinds of weather ... rain, snow, sleet, tornados, I even drove with a hurricane coming one time, because I knew that I could get in and out and be 3-4 hours back inland before it was scheduled to hit. I'm a bit of a nut like that. It takes quite a team to make these runs happen. Our rescue coordinator works with the groups to pick their pets and our full veterinary staff spays/neuters, vaccinates and microchips each pet. The shelter workers help with all the paperwork. Our volunteers and staff come a couple of hours before each trip to walk all of the animals before they leave on their journey. And there are our rescue groups and adopters who work with our animals and get them into great new homes. And there's me. I drive the truck. I meet interesting people and find myself in crazy situations at times. I've written this book to share my adventures, stories, heartbreak, happiness ... it's been eventful, to say the least. I love this job and I'm proud to play my part in rescuing these deserving creatures.