Saving Lives with Good Flights: Hairy Pawter’s Story

Greater Good Charities’ Good Flights program conducts life-saving airlifts and supports ground transport for at-risk pet populations (asymptomatic heartworm positive dogs, homeless cats, bully breeds), and provides disaster relief.

Meet Hairy Pawter, one of the lucky heartworm-positive shelter dogs selected to go on the inaugural Save-A-Heart flight. Adorable, happy, energetic little Hairy could steal anyone’s heart. Many shelters struggle to find the resources to treat this curable disease, and if you are a pet like Hairy Pawter in an overcrowded municipal shelter in the South, your chances of making it out are slim.

That’s why Good Flights is dedicated to saving the lives of heartworm-positive pets like Hairy Pawter by transporting them to safety and treating their illness. We’ve partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health to treat pets like Hairy so they can receive the life-saving treatment they need to be happy and healthy in their new forever homes.

Good Flights’ Save-a-Heart initiative aims to reduce shelter euthanasia in overcrowded shelters by preventing and treating heartworm disease in shelter dogs and transporting adoptable asymptomatic heartworm-positive dogs to safety. Our inaugural Save-A-Heart mission saved more than 150 at-risk shelter dogs from seven shelters in the south. These flights were a wonderful success, helping so many dogs find their forever families in loving adoptive homes! 

Heartworm disease is progressive and fatal but is treatable and curable in most cases when diagnosed early, and preventable with the proper medication. Unfortunately, the cost of treatment for many shelters is prohibitive—and if you are a heartworm-positive pet in an already overcrowded, under-resourced municipal shelter your chances of making it out of the shelter are slim to none. 

@greatergoodcharities

Let's save heartworm-positive dogs. ##dogsoftiktok ##rescuedog ##petlover ##fypシ

♬ Paper Birds (3 min) - Jordan Halpern Schwartz

And with Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health, we’ve made it our goal to transport at least 1,000 heartworm-positive dogs to safety this year and treating another 2,500 who will remain in the South for adoption! 

Your donation provides lifesaving support for at-risk shelter dogs!