How very sad.

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20100805/US.Airline.Dead.Puppies/

How awful. This is why I will not ship my pups.

I'm sure we've all seen on the news the stories of PEOPLE stuck on a plane with no air and no water for hours. So just imagine the conditions in the cargo hold of that delayed plane. When things go according to plan, all is fine, but there is no way to KNOW what's going to happen to a particular flight on a particular day. Flying puppies in this heat is just nuts, in MY OPINION.

Here's another link, which also includes links to other information: http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/post/2010/08/puppy-deaths-airline-flight/104317/1 Those poor babies!

people assume that if they have had a good "shipping experience", the practice must always be completely safe. Not true. There are too many variables, not in anyone's control, that can lead to a chain of events where the shipped puppy's life is placed in peril.

Here there was bad weather in another location which caused the flight's delay. No one's fault to be certain, but it still led to consequences which caused the puppies' death. Dogs die in flight because of accidents; something that was unexpected happens which leads to the dogs' death. At least when someone picks up a dog personally or delivers a dog personally, there is a human being on hand to deal with changed circumstances and protect the puppy. Caged and alone in a cargo hold, what chance does any dog have?

I read the shipper was shipping 14 puppies to another state? I really hope it was not a puppy mill.
The 7 that died were all on the same plane going to the same city. How many breeders place 7 puppies in the same state from another state? Made me very sad for those puppies on several accounts.

My guess is that these pups were very young. All I can see are those 14 little babies all crammed into 1 crate :( (I dont know if they were - but I am assuming they were if these people were stupid enough to a) send them during this heat and b) send that many))

Think lessons could be learned from this, nothing will change, airlines accept bad press as course of doing business, Federal Agencies charged with oversight and enforcement are staffed by people who can't get jobs anywhere else.

To be honest, I wouldnt put it past anyone. Really - could you see a person ( I won't refer to them as a breeder because I am going to assume that this is a complete idiot and I don't want to degrade anyone on this list) spending the extra dollars in shipping 14 separate crates with a puppy in each?

No, they would try and do anything possible to get AA to ship these as cheap as possible, especially if its a puppymill. And whose to say the person didnt have leads at AA to skip out on the rules? Maybe the person even worked at AA.

Goodness knows.

This just doesn't sound right. I'm waiting to hear the whole story. We don't know anything about who was shipping the puppies and what conditions they were subjected to before the flight. It will be interesting to see if their vet health certificates are real or forged.

After those 7 dogs died last June due to that handler's negligence, I stopped sending my dogs out with a handler. I have never shipped a puppy, but I have had puppies and dogs shipped to me. Now with hearing about this terrible tragedy, I will never ship a puppy or an adult dog.

It is not knee jerk analysis. What happened to the puppies was not "stupid", in that no person was to blame except perhaps Mother Nature. No human being had control over any bad weather which delayed the flight and started a chain of events which doomed the puppies. Now if the puppies were picked up by their perspective buyers, or if the puppies were taken by the breeder personally to the new owners, chances are nothing would have happened to them. What is being expressed is that flying dogs anywhere, unless they are under the seat with you in the plane, is a dangerous way to transport dogs. That is not a knee jerk reaction; that is pure analysis. Sorry.

I'm with you, Concerned.

Some years ago I placed a puppy with a wonderful family whose father was a pilot for a major airline; they would not fly a puppy on the airline.

There is an infamous show mill, probably not on this board, that has been know to ship out of Tulsa from Havana KS. Some pups grow up to be champions, others have been sold through pet stores, and more have been more profitably sold over the internet directly to buyers. She does do some OFA. I almost choked a few years ago when a breeder judge put up one of hers in FL with a handler on it. No one could have known who owned the dog, and, knowing the judge, it was probably decent representative of the breed on the day. That being said, my heart was sick when I saw this news. That could have been a lot of Labs, Goldens, and Weims. That being said, her web page shows a Delta plane. There are a lot of other, er, commercial breeders in KS. Yes, she has a federal number to be among that lot. Makes it hard to tell the puppy buyers why the breeder who OFAs hips and has 30 some show champions is not where I would like them to buy. (About all they can understand is, If you want a house dog, buy a pup raised in a house or socialized to house noises at least!)

Sorry for the puppies, but those puppies died because airlines make mistakes, making flying puppies is inherently full of risks--regardless of who sends them, how many puppies they send, when the puppies are sent, or what airline is used. Some breeders are willing to take those risks. I am not willing to trust my puppies to airlines that reschedule/cancel my flights, overbook, and lose my luggage.