July 16, 2025
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Air service for rescued pets? Shipment of cats, dogs lands in Peru

130 animals transferred from Peru airport to 6 shelters

By Tom Collins
Chuck Studer hauls a rescue cat in its crate from a plane Tuesday, March 22, 2022, at Illinois Valley Regional Airport in Peru.

Chuck Studer, airport manager, helps unload rescued animals in their crates from a plane that landed Tuesday, March 22, 2022, at Illinois Valley Regional Airport in Peru. About 130 unwanted or abused animals were flown from overcrowded shelters in Texas to Peru, where volunteers took them by van to regional shelters with the space to house them. (Tom Collins - tcollins@shawmedia.com)

More than 100 rescued cats and dogs landed Tuesday at Illinois Valley Regional Airport, en route to animal shelters across the upper Midwest.

A small line of moving vans snaked up to a plane with twin propellers that had landed shortly before 3:30 p.m. from Hidalgo, Texas. There, shelters had too many rescued pets to handle. Volunteers from animal shelters with extra space loaded the pet crates into the vans for transport not only to shelters in Illinois but to Wisconsin and Michigan.

Amy Good, director of development and marketing for the Dane County (Wisconsin) Humane Society, said a total of 130 unwanted, neglected and/or abused pets would be taken to six shelters with the space to accommodate them.

The transfer was arranged through the Bissell Pet Foundation, which not only tries to find homes for pets but to assist shelters that are struggling with capacity issues.

“They recognized there’s an overpopulation problem in Texas — this specific shelter had more than 1,000 animals in care — and they (Bissell) wanted to step in and help,” Good explained.

Shelter-to-shelter transfers are not uncommon, she said, but transfers by air are less common. Good said animals in crates usually are transferred by van; but in this case the nearly 1,400-mile transfer would be too hard on the animals so coordinators agreed to limit their stress with a three-hour flight.

Linda Kozel, office manager for the Peru airport, said to her knowledge this was the first time Peru was used as a hub in an air-to-land transfer for rescued animals.