My name is David Owen, My wife Deb, and I started Owen Family Pet Transport a little over a year ago at the beginning of the Covid pandemic during the furlough period in an effort to continue sustaining our household while doing something we felt passionate about.

We aimed to bring a new gold standard to pet transportation as we found the current model deplorable.

While we were successful in our vision, It became quickly apparent to us that there was a darker side to pet transport, and the majority of dogs moving around the country are rescues moving from shelter to shelter in vans full of 30 plus dogs for days and weeks at a time, in not great conditions.  As we found this utterly disgusting for people's pets, it did seem like a necessary evil for rescue dogs.

You see, for many shelters in the south which are overrun because of social and legal differences with spaying and neutering, In order for them to stay a "no kill" shelter they rely on transports to bring dogs to northern shelters that are not overrun.  These Northern shelters get dogs adopted much more quickly.

Unfortunately, with our gold standard business model we are unable to accommodate mass-transports and we're only able to transport a few dogs at a time either from the same litter or individual adults.

But then we met Juno, and our eyes were opened again.  Juno was a timber wolf hybrid in Greenville South Carolina.  Like almost all other wolf hybrids once he got out of the cute puppy stage his owners found him destructive and violent.  This is not his fault, this is nature, and there are people who are trained, and have the time and money to care for wolf dogs, but they are definitely special-need.  But the majority of wolf dogs are given up to shelters before one year of life, and most are euthanized because they cannot find a good home.  This is not unique to Wolf Dogs.  Many dogs who have been ripped from their home time and time again get abandonment anxiety and have trust issues in general with humans.  They are great dogs who just need a loving home to make a commitment to them, but they rely on special rescues who know how to rehabilitate them and how to place them in good homes.  Because of these special dogs temperaments, they need special transport, which happens to be in our wheelhouse.  For obvious reasons, they cannot ride with strange dogs, they cannot be handed off time and time again by a team of volunteers doing legs of a journey, and they can only be handled by people who know how to handle them, as they are at high risk for escape and hurting themselves or others.  Luckily for Juno, W.O.L.F. Sanctuary In Colorado found him online in the Greenville South Carolina Rescue, and placed him in a loving home in Golden Colorado with acres of land to explore and other wolf hybrids to bond with.  And, Luckily for Juno, that local rescue found us and we were able to safely deliver Juno to his new forever home.

But we are contacted by rescues all the time, and unfortunately they don't have the funds to pay for transport, even though they know they have a place for these dogs they simply cannot get the dogs where they need to go.  As a small business that needs to support their family we can only do so much.

We are starting a transport fund that specifically and directly goes to the costs of transporting special needs rescues.  This is helping wolf dogs like Juno, other high anxiety dogs, or dogs with special health/emotional needs.

Our ultimate goal, is to start a non-profit 501c3 that just focuses on transporting rescue dogs, But we have to start somewhere.  The transport of these animals is literally just as vital to their survival as the rescues themselves.  Without transport these dogs are euthanized eventually.  We ask for your donation, any amount will do, and if you can't donate please share publicly on your social media.