We do our best with our partner Jindo Love Rescue to match dogs rescued in South Korea to adopters in North America, but once in a while, things don’t work out. Despite the setback, a recent case of one of our dogs needing to be rehomed has highlighted what an amazing community we’re part of.  

Cubby has been through so much already. He was dumped in rough shape in front of our foster center in 2019 when he was just 10 months old and waited four years to be adopted. He survived the fire at our foster center last summer, despite being one of our most critical cases, but lost his best friend Dion who we were hoping to place him with.

We finally found the perfect home for him, or so we thought, but after just a few weeks it became clear it wasn’t going to work out; he has a high prey drive that he never showed while in our care.

Even though some of our dogs do not present these tendencies, most of our dogs are spitz breeds and we’re very upfront and honest with applicants that they haven’t been cat tested and may not be a great fit for every home. If adopters are experienced and willing to take the chance to get everybody acclimated, we hope for the best and match dogs and adopters accordingly.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out for Cubby, but what happened next reminds us of what an incredible community we have supporting our dogs.

We had to move Cubby from Colorado to his new foster home in Seattle, Washington. Domestic flights are expensive and driving would have been a complicated 20 hours of people taking different legs of the trip.

Cubby’s new foster dad Stoph Johnson, who adopted two of our dogs Bocce and Treasure, worked hard to figure out the best route. He connected with aspiring pilot Ashton Van Zant, who connected with pilots Cynthia and Kyle Durand who personally flew Cubby in their private plane.

They stopped in Idaho for gas and to wait out bad weather, but they were determined to get Cubby to his new home. Stoph and his wife Heather were waiting to meet them with Bocce and Treasure, and so was our team member Grace Lee and Jindo Love Rescue pup Oscar who came to offer extra support and celebrate his arrival.

Cubby’s settling in at his new home, and we’re hoping to see a foster fail, but it’s still too soon to tell if it will work out permanently. In the meantime, we can’t believe how far he’s come and we’re incredibly grateful to everyone who stepped up to help and so proud to be part of this dog-loving community.

You can help support our work by making a donation, spreading the word about our ongoing need for flight volunteers to courier dogs to new homes, and by adopting — you can find many available dogs on Jindo Love Rescue’s Facebook page.

You can also help support our effort to see the dog meat trade ended by signing and sharing our alert urging South Korea to pass legislation that would ban it once and for all.