Adult female holding a beagle mix dog at a beach on a bright summer day with clear skies and red, white, and brown colors dominating the scene. 1:24
Visit Turks and Caicos Islands channel icon Visit Turks and Caicos IslandsOriginal creator 704 views Save

Borrow a rescue puppy for a day at the beach

On Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos, a beach day can come with a borrowed puppy, courtesy of a local dog rescue. more

The rescue is Potcake Place, a nonprofit on the island. Dogs that spend their days in rescue care often miss out on meeting new people. Without that, they can grow up shy and slow to warm up to strangers.

So Potcake Place asks visitors to help. Instead of only lying on the white sand, a tourist can spend time with one of the puppies, and the puppy gets practice with someone new.

Adult female holding a beagle mix dog at a beach on a bright summer day with clear skies and red, white, and brown colors dominating the scene. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
On Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos, a beach day can come with a borrowed puppy, courtesy of a local dog rescue.

The rescue hands over what the outing needs, from treats and toys to waste bags that keep the beach clean. Then it's beach time, and the puppies run and play in the sand with their new friends, best done before the sand gets too warm.

Some visitors fall for their beach buddy and can't face flying home alone. Tourists from the US and Canada can adopt, and about 500 puppies a year used to go home to the US. Then the CDC, the US health agency, banned puppies under six months old from entering the country, and US adoptions fell to around five a month.

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US adoptions from the islands have dropped from about 500 a year to around five a month.

Jane, who founded Potcake Place and runs it, explains why that hurts so much. By six months, most of these puppies are too big to fly in the cabin, and no commercial airline will take checked pets from the islands into the US. The ban is meant to slow rabies, a fair worry, she says, but the islands are rated low risk and the puppies are fully vaccinated before they travel.

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Jane, who founded Potcake Place, holds a puppy as she explains why the ban hits island dogs so hard.

Every puppy goes to a screened, approved home, not a shelter, and the rescue helps keep the islands' stray dog numbers in check. If puppies can't be adopted out, the rescue can't take more dogs in. Jane is asking Americans to urge their representatives to review the ban.

Even a puppy who goes back to the rescue after a beach day has spent time with someone new. For a shy rescue dog, that counts for a lot.

#puppies#adoption#animalrescue