Two Very Large Dogs Get a Free Plane Ride Across the U.S., Thanks to Wrigley Heiress

Airlines refused to fly a U.S. Marine's Anatolian Shepherds home, so Helen Rosburg stepped in.

It turns out that Wrigley chewing gum is good for more than getting you through excruciating nicotine withdrawal, popping your ears after a long flight, or decorating the underside of your school desk. Well, at least you can say that about the family behind the company. Although this will probably destroy my reputation as a hardened cynic, I have to admit to feeling a little verklempt at the story of how Helen Rosburg, the heiress to the Wrigley family fortune, paid to fly a family's two dogs across the country.

Andrew Morales, a U.S. Marine, rescued two Anatolian Shepherd mixes three years ago while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan. The dogs, Dusty and Wyatt, have become part of the Morales family since they came home with Andrew, but it looked like his most recent assignment would tear that family apart. Airline after airline told him that the dogs were too big to fly on commercial planes. It looked like the family members might just have to leave their beloved pets in California while they started a new life in North Carolina.

So the Morales family did what people do in the 21st century: They turned to the Internet for help. The organization that had originally helped to bring the dogs back from Afghanistan put out an online call for people to help Dusty and Wyatt travel with their family. Their plea for help eventually reached Rosburg, a passionate animal lover who founded the On the Wings of Angels rescue organization and raises German Shepherds for service and military training.

"Everybody in my circle knows what I do," Rosburg told ABC News. "If they see an impossible situation, they'll post something to my [Facebook] timeline."

On hearing that the Morales family might have to leave Dusty and Wyatt behind, Rosburg chartered a private plane to take the two dogs from California to North Carolina.

"From the bottom of me and my wife's hearts we really appreciate what she did for us," Morales said.

So not only are members of the Morales family back together with their furry companions, but there's no doubt that a chartered plane was a much more comfortable way for the dogs to travel than your standard commercial flight. Here's hoping that the dogs are settling into their new home.

Via ABC News

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Thanks in Big Part to Dogsters’ Support, Tugg Will Star in His Video Series!

Dogster power! That’s what was behind 20 percent of the donations in a Kickstarter project to help Tugg star in a wonderful Internet video series. Without the support of Dogsters, Tugg would probably not be able to bring his story of hope and “woofing it forward” to the world.

You can read all about Tugg and the project in our interview with Blake Ovard, who, with wife Kim, took in Tugg when he was pretty  much given up as a goner because of terrible neglect/abuse.

Ovard is thrilled, and so grateful to Dogster readers. I asked him to let us know how the victory for Tugg’s video series funding unfolded in those last days, and if he contributed anything. Here he is:

We are so happy to be part of the Dogster family! Dogster really came through for the project! One of the neat things we can see on the control panel for the project, in addition to the amounts pledged, how many backers there are, and some cool graphs and charts, is where each backer found the project from. Dogster folks — the ones coming directly to the kickstarter project page from Dogster — made up nearly 20% of the dollars donated! That’s about $1,500! And, out of the 161 backers, 40 of them came directly from Dogster!

It came close to the wire, but we believe in Tugg’s message, so we knew we would get there! We actually came in slightly over the goal — 104% — at $8,329. Which is good because, our goal was the bare minimum we knew we would need for the whole process of creating the web series. I think we crossed over the goal line with slightly more than 24 hours to go.

Because Kickstarter is set up through Amazon payments, which processes all pledges as credit card purchases, by law, we were not able to pledge to the project. Just like if you have a shop, you aren’t allowed to buy something from yourself with your own credit card. We knew that from the beginning, so we did take that into account when we set up the project — that’s why the goal on Kickstarter was $8,000. Our actual budget is $10,000, but we decided that if we could get to $8,000, we would cover the additional expense ourselves. So, the whole time the Kickstarter project was running we were setting back part of each paycheck in anticipation for making it!

I think what helped at the end — and by end, I mean the last couple of days — is people started telling all of their friends about the project and encouraging them to get involved.

We received a lot of encouraging e-mails telling us how much everyone wuffed the idea of the web series, how much they want to be part of it, and how excited they were to know that there will be a web series with a positive message that everyone can enjoy. Plus Tugg and Dogster have some of the best fans in the world, and many of them e-mailed in the last 48 hours saying not to worry, it would happen!

It’s almost surreal for us at this point in time, since we just made our goal. While it is really exciting, it also a little intimidating … here we are with Tugg, who we do pupdates for every day, but now we have the honor of getting to share him on an even bigger scale, with more of the world. That means other creative people get to come on board with the project too.

So, soon we’ll have a whole set of people while we are filming, and a whole studio of animators animating, for a dog who is, well, our dog! Sure we’ve done little videos, but this is an almost overwhelming undertaking — but one we’ll be doing with huge smiles on our faces the whole time!

We should begin filming in the first and middle part of March, and hope to wrap by the beginning to mid-April. That leaves us about a month of postproduction. As for animation, it will start as soon as I send all the character sketches and the animation scripts to the animation studio. That should be in the next two weeks. We hope to have the first episode air by the end of May or first week in June. And the season will run for 15 weeks, maybe 16 if we decide to throw in a “blooper” episode.

Tugg is superexcited about the project — which is good, since he’s a superhero! He walked around all day clacking the clacker and yelling, “Roll ‘em!” and, “Cut!” Then he would sit in his director’s chair and act  like he was on the set of Ellen, talking to her about the series and his motivations for a particular scene.

Thank you, Dogster, for helping make this a reality!

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Twyla catches the wave — over and over again — thanks to a clicker

I am not an especially good trainer. There’s a reason I’ve always chosen breeds that are easy to live with and don’t need or want extensive training. I’ve used a clicker to teach basic behaviors like sit and down and to reinforce tricks the girls do naturally like roll over and sit up, but when it comes to using it to shape behaviors, I just don’t have the patience. I find that the girls are so excited that the clicker and the treats are out, I can’t get them to pay attention to actually producing new behaviors. They just offer all the things they already know, over and over. Every once in a while I try again, though, usually after I’ve written something training-related. “It can’t be that hard,” I think. “People train cats.”

This time I decided to work on teaching Harper and Twyla to touch a target stick. I’ve tried this before with no success, but this time Twyla was interested. She got the hang of it very quickly, and I decided to add a new element. I put a bowl on the floor, turned upside down, and used the target stick to get her to touch it with a paw. Bingo! We were on a roll. Then I got her to start lifting her paw to touch the target stick (which was a bird perch). Within half an hour, maybe less, I had taught her to “High Five.” It’s the first trick I’ve ever taught one of them that wasn’t a natural behavior, so I was pretty stoked.

We practiced a little more the next morning, and she still remembered it. Since then, she has been a waving fool. It used to be that she would come remind me that it was time for elevenses, but otherwise she was content to lie in her recliner or play with her Skinnneez toys. Not anymore. Now it’s train, train, train, all the time. She cries if I won’t get up and let her do some tricks–for treats, natch. It’s like having a little kid always saying, “Hey, look at me do this!” Every time I stand up, Twyla views it as an opportunity.

Harper is disgruntled now that her “sit pretty” trick has been superseded. She’s a little suspicious of the bird perch, but she’s good at spinning so we’re working on “chase your tail.” And I think I had better come up with some new things for Twyla to learn. I just wish I could teach her to transcribe interviews.

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