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What is Transport?
About Animal Transport and the
Dachshund Underground Railroad
by Janet Cook
This is how transport works...
When a doxie is adopted, and is located, say in south Florida, we transport the dog by volunteers to
wherever its new home is, at no cost to the adopting family, unless of course it
isn't far or the family is willing to go pick it up themselves.
Although FLDR tries to adopt only in Florida, the national rescues send dogs all over the USA. I help them with
their dogs also.
I am a transport coordinator for the Dachshund Underground Railroad (DUR) and what I do, as a
coordinator, is plot out the run by maps and mapping software, break it into about 100 mile increments and
then start looking for drivers to fill those legs. I have a database of rescue
volunteers all over Florida and the rest of the country, along with being on
about 70 various rescue group lists. Once the run legs are filled, I get each
drivers info, car, cell phone, etc., and work out the timing and meeting places
for the run. If all goes well, the pup gets to his/her new home, hopefully, without the pup or the
drivers getting lost. Some runs are relatively simple, like from Fort Walton to Pat in Lakeland,
some are more complicated, like ones from Pensacola to New York, or New England, Chicago, Texas, Western
Missouri (where a lot of puppymills are located) to Pennsylvania, etc., or involving multiple dogs going off in different directions in several stages along the run. I am always looking for
drivers (LOL HINT HINT!!). I do runs all over the country for other rescues and other breeds, so if you have family and friends
interested in driving a segment of a run, let me know. It is amazing the number of rescued dogs
moving around the country on any given weekend and the number of transports
that have to cancel because we can't fill the legs. There are only about 10-12
coordinators that I know of for ALL rescues, so it's a full time job in
itself.
If you ever want to take a drive, let me know, and I'll supply you
with 2 or 3 passengers! All of the rescue dogs going into homes will always be traveling
up-to-date on shots and altered. Sometimes we do shelter runs, in which we are trying to just
get the dogs into the safety of a rescue - those dogs may come in "as is"
condition so I don't recommend bringing any personal dogs along with
you, as you don't want to invite illness, however, the adoptive runs are normally
without problems.
Please email Janet if
you are interested in helping to transport!
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