Ten wagging tails belonging to ten excited dogs, all ready to start a new life – thanks to the Humane Society, Cayman Airways, and Pets Alive, a shelter in New York State. The dogs were being put into crates ready for  a flight to JFK airport, where hopefully they will all find loving homes.

Justine Riseley, one of the volunteers flying to New York with the dogs, explained: “We have been working with a shelter which is a no-kill shelter up in New York in a place called Middleton. They have more capacity and better ability to adopt out the dogs.

“The main problem here is that people are just not spaying and neutering their pets, and as a result, the shelter has more dogs coming in than they have room for.

“Until we get to the point when where we spay and neuter more animals then we will always have more animals than we have the ability to deal with. Since it’s a small island, there is nowhere else for them to go, often we have to close our doors to new admissions because we’re just overcrowded, which is very bad for the welfare of the cats and the dogs.”

The flight is another step of an ongoing relationship the Cayman Humane Society has set up with the New York based shelter:

“Pets Alive took a transfer of seven adult dogs in December, and all of those animals were adopted within ten weeks so now they have capacity again.” Ms Riseley said.

The dogs are all more than six months old and they are therefore classed as ‘adults’ rather than puppies.  
“Adults are the hardest animals to get out of the shelter because a lot of people only want puppies. There are great benefits of taking an adult dog rather than a puppy – and we do try to educate people on that – puppies are a handful – they chew your furniture and they wee on your floor – but the adults are much more mellow and trained and a lot more placid in your house as a rule.” Ms Riseley said.

“We wanted to thank Cayman Airways for their assistance – they fly the dogs to the States for free.” Ms Riseley said.

In addition, the public could help with the airfares of the dog’s ‘chaperones’ –that is the Humane Society volunteers who are needed to fly to New York with the dogs.

“If donors would like to help they can go onto the Cayman Airways website and donate air miles to the Cayman Humane Society.” Ms Riseley said.