MISSOULA, Mont. — California animal shelters are overwhelmed by the influx of animals displaced by wildfire evacuations.
The Humane Society of Western Montana decided to lend a helping hand and coordinate a transfer of 40 dogs from California that were already in shelters to free up space.
Those dogs arrived at the airport in Missoula on Sunday and now are in search of new homes.
“The situation in California is quite tragic and our community has been expressing interest in helping in a variety of ways and this is the way the Human Society and it’s partners can help pets and families in California,” HSWM Executive Director Marta Pierpoint said.
“Blows my mind and amazes me how people in the animal welfare industry come together to make things happen. I just think it’s a lot of dedication and hard work and late nights and teamwork to go into an endeavor like this,” HSWM Director of Finance and Best Practice Nicole Nolte said.
The 40 dogs were transferred from the California organization Paws for Life K9 Rescue by Wings of Rescue.
“Making sure all the dogs get all their health checks they need, the health certificates, the vaccines required to cross state lines and fly into Montana,” Nolte said.
Some people have lost their lives to the wildfires in California, many have lost their homes. There are also people who got separated from their pets and Montanans are compassionate people and needed to find a way to help.
“What’s really special about this particular transfer is that we have other organizations across Montana that are helping with the pets and the Bitterroot Humane, Heart of the Valley and Stafford Animal Services are all taking pets which means we can take in even more from California and of course on top of that, we need foster families and adopters to come and step up to the plate and help as well and so far the interest has just been heartwarming,” Pierpoint said.
In order to help and create space, you have to have space. In order to have space, people need to be willing to either foster or adopt and that message has reached the community loud and clear.
“When we posted a need for fosters for some of the animals in our buildings so we could make space for these animals to check them in the response was just outstanding,” Pierpoint said. “So, when we make an announcement like this on social media and we see so many people interested, we know we really can help because our community wants to help.”
“We have regular calls and we talked about this ahead of time to see who would be able to help out and the Humane Society of Western Montana kind of used my organizational superpowers and I sent out a query to see who could help and coordinated with the other receiving shelters to see how many they could take and what kind,” Nolte said.
The Human Society of Western Montana is no stranger to transporting dogs from out of state and that experience helped make this current process a smooth one.
We have solid partners in the Los Angeles area which helps and we also know what it takes to do a transport.
And Montana is ready to continue to help in any way they can.
“This is a dynamic situation and the fires are continuing,” Pierpoint said. “New fires are starting in Southern California and all of us need to be prepared to help on a longer-term basis.”
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