In the Harry Potter novels and movies, Hermione has a purse that looks like any normal teenager’s bag. However, when she needs something, she usually has it in the tote – a tent and furnishings big enough to house a family, pots and pans, and a host of huge items.
Hermione had magic on her side. At Oakland Animal Services, we had our own brand of magic recently when 25 dogs in individual crates were somehow squeezed into a single-engine plane so that they could be transported to Ponderay, Idaho, where they would go to Panhandle Animal Shelter. Small dogs are scarce there, and our sweet pups find homes quickly up north, where the demand is high.
It took a lot of hard work, if not hocus-pocus, to pull off this transport. In the days prior to take-off, dogs were readied by a whole crew of volunteers and the veterinary staff, crates were cleaned and prepared, and reams of paperwork had to be filled out. The Saturday morning of the transport, volunteers were at the shelter at dawn to walk and potty-break the dogs before they were crated and loaded onto a van for the airport.
Volunteer Deirdre and her husband Rodger, who had made the contact with the Idaho shelter, drove the dogs to the Livermore airport, where the magic of fitting them into the plane took place. Friends of Oakland Animal Services paid the group Wings of Rescue a discounted rate to fly them. Pilots Jerry and Carol took the controls getting the dogs to Idaho. And they arrived safely and soundly, ready for new lives in forever homes.
It takes a village and a little touch of magic to make good things happen, doesn’t it?