Yesterday the Monroe Monitor & Valley News reported that a Sultan family is taking care of a military family’s bulldog while they are in Japan.
Devin Alford and his wife Danielle lived in Little Rock, Arkansas with their 2-year-old bulldog name Bruce. Alford is a pilot in the Air Force and recently completed 8 months of training.
The Monitor said that after Alford finished his training the Air Force gave him a “permanent change of station” to Tokyo. Alford and Danielle originally planned to fly Bruce there through Air Cargo Canada, but due to airline regulations, Bruce couldn’t fly because of airline rules against transporting dogs in hot weather.
According to PetTravel.com, “pets will not be accepted by most airlines when the current or forecasted temperature at the arrival, layover or departure airport is above 84°F (29°C) at any location on the itinerary (limit for snub-nosed dogs and snub-nosed cats is 75°F).”
The reason for this restriction is that the heat on the tarmac can heat up the cargo hold quickly. In addition, many airlines do not have air-conditioned holding areas for pets, so if a flight is delayed a dog could die from heat stroke.
Marianne Naslund and her husband are keeping Bruce, a 2-year-old bulldog, until he can fly to Tokyo to be with his military family. Photo from Chris Hendrickson/Monroe Monitor and Valley News.
Because bulldogs are snub-nosed, the temperature in Vancouver and Tokyo has to be under 75 degrees for Bruce to fly, and currently it’s too hot for the airline to allow him to fly.
The Alford’s looked into boarding Bruce until the airlines’ heat restriction is lifted in October, but that option was too expensive for them to afford.
Instead, they registered Bruce with Dogs on Deployment, a nonprofit group that provides a central network for military members to find volunteers willing to board their pets while they are deployed or have other service commitments and unable to temporarily care for their pets.
That’s where Sultan City Councilmember Marianne Naslund stepped in.
According to the Monitor, Ms. Naslund had “a mild case of empty-nest syndrome” as 2 of her 3 sons had joined the military. But after she “stumbled across” Dogs on Deployment’s website, she decided to use her spare time to help another military family by boarding their dog.
After running across the Alford’s and Bruce, she convinced her husband they needed to help them by taking care of Bruce.
So after the Nashlund’s were approved by Dogs on Deployment, they arranged to have Bruce sent to Seattle by a bulldog transportation company (who knew there was such a thing?) called D & M Bulldogs & Transport.
They picked up Bruce in Seattle on June 20, and he will stay with them in Sultan until the airlines’ heat restriction is lifted in October and he can fly to Tokyo to be reunited with the Alfords.
“Finding Marianne was such a blessing,” Danielle Alford told the Monitor. “My mother asked me when we first found out that Bruce couldn’t fly, how was I going to find someone that was going to spoil Bruce like I do? But after talking with Marianne I knew that she was going to spoil Bruce just as much or more than I could.”
I’ve written about Dogs on Deployment in the past, and I think the organization does a fantastic job ensuring that military families can keep their dogs by connecting them to people willing to board them. Without DOD, many military families would have to surrender their dogs to shelters.
To learn more about them, go to their website or Facebook page.
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