By Paul Hammel
LINCOLN — Behold the love of pets.
A dog that ran away in North Platte a week ago is getting a private flight home to Tennessee this weekend to be reunited with his family.
“Chewy,” a 10-year-old Border Collie, got loose at a North Platte motel on July 22.
After hours of unsuccessful searching, her family — which was moving from Idaho to Tennessee — had to resume their trip, according to Jessica Sprague, the vice president of a North Platte animal rescue group called FUR Animal Rescue.
Home in Tennessee
Sprague said that the North Platte animal shelter discovered that the dog was micro-chipped, and eventually, that led to reaching the owners, Alex and Kyra Brown. They said that they loved their dog, but could not afford a trip back from Munford, Tennessee, to Nebraska to pick it up.
That’s when the president of FUR, Jenn Porter-Milne, got to work, contacting a nonprofit group, Pilots for Paws, that provides flights for animal rescues.
On Saturday afternoon, Porter-Milne and her husband drove Chewy to Omaha, where they met volunteer pilot Allan Lindsay of Omaha, who will fly the dog home either Saturday night or Sunday, weather permitting.
Porter-Milne said Saturday that rescuing animals is “an absolute roller coaster” of ups and downs.
“Saving one animal won’t change the world,” she said, “but for that one animal, their world changes forever.”