Dozens Of At-Risk Dogs Get New Leash On Life In South Florida

FORT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) – Dozens of at-risk dogs are getting a chance at a new life and their journey brought them here to South Florida.

"This is our third flight in two days and our initiative is to transport over two thousand highly adoptable pets to our shelter partners, one thousand of which will be heartworm positive," explained Erin Robbins, Director of Transport at Greater Good Charities.

The dogs, about 40 of them, were flown from New Orleans to Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday and then moved to the Humane Society of Broward County.

The flight is part of Greater Good Charities' inaugural Save a Heart mission that will airlift, in total, 120 shelter pets to the East Coast via three planes over two days.

The year-long goal of Save a Heart is to transport 2,000 shelter dogs from Louisiana, where they are at risk of euthanasia, to new homes on the East Coast. That number includes 1,000 asymptomatic heartworm-positive dogs.

According to the American Heartworm Society, Louisiana is one of the leading states in heartworm infection rates in the United States. That puts heartworm-positive shelter dogs in Louisiana at a higher risk of euthanasia due to the length of care, space required and cost of treatment.

The heartworm-positive dogs will be treated at the Humane Society of Broward and ideally, placed into foster or adoptive homes to complete heartworm treatment and be monitored until they test negative.