Flying Tails Rescues LA Fire Dogs

By David Bolling

There is no definitive number yet on the number of animals – domesticated or wild – that have been rescued from the inferno that became Los Angeles. More than 700 animals had been dropped off at the Pasadena Humane shelter after the first week of fire, 150 of them strays. But that’s just a fraction of the total. Rescued animals include horses, donkeys, chickens, goats, pigs, rabbits, lizards, a now-famous giant tortoise and a great many dogs and cats.

Now, two of those dogs are guests of Pets Lifeline in Sonoma, and 12 of them have been distributed equitably between shelters in Petaluma, Sonoma, Sacramento and Reno.

All were delivered to the Bay Area by a team of five private pilots, all members of Flying Tails, the nonprofit passion project of former KRON-TV4 anchor Ken Wayne. Wayne is now a Sonoma resident and a longtime pilot whose flying rescue trips have been well-reported locally. Until recently the Flying Tails air force consisted solely of Ken and his Cessna 182.

The plane will carry four people, or one person and two bear cubs, or a bald eagle, or a peregrine falcon, or a colony of bats, or a young sea lion, all among the assortment of wild creatures Ken has flown. But his most recent rescue run was all about dogs, a logistical challenge of epic proportions that was masterfully sorted by Olivia Kristiansen, CEO of Pets Lifeline and a veteran of the tech industry with well-honed logistical skills. The logistics in question involved routing Ken and four other Flying Tail recruits to the Van Nuys airport, organizing the placement of all the dogs into smallish airplanes, and then sending them to a variety of end points in Northern California to connect with the animal shelters that were waiting to take them in, ideally before dark. Most of the dogs were big – up to 100 pounds – too big to be placed in crates that wouldn’t fit in the planes, so most of them were simply loaded on the leash, free to roam the cockpit, as it were.

Ken is now gearing up to grow Flying Tails further in order to meet the constant demand. To help do that, he is hosting a fundraising event at Hanna Center in Sonoma on February 6, with food, cocktails, an auction and a live Sinatra tribute show. For tickets and more information go to flyingtails.org.