Puppies rescued from storms find shelter in Salem

SALEM, Mass. -- One by one they were brought out of a specially outfitted van to the Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem.

Thirty-eight shelter dogs from Georgia were welcomed to New England to make room in southern shelters for other animals displaced by the terrible series of twisters.

"Some of them were running everywhere, there were animal rescue people trying to catch them and put them somewhere where those can reclaim them,” one woman said. “But if they don’t get reclaimed within a certain period of time, their either put down or sent out of state."

The adoption demand is traditionally stronger up north and the kennel workers even found ways to make room for more dogs right now.

The Salem facility is a no-kill shelter and the ability to take these animals from shelters hard pressed in the south means more of them will be saved and find new homes.

It was a 19-hour non-stop ride from Georgia overnight.

"The reason we travel at night is because they sleep the whole way,” Mike Christman said. “So I give ‘em water, a little TLC and we’re good to go."

This is just the first shipment with more to come from all over the hard-hit south.

The shelter has more than a hundred dogs, cats and kittens available for adoption.

The more they can adopt out, the more they can help relieve the pressure on the tornado-stricken south.

Puppy Pipeline is the Georgia company that transported the dogs to Salem. They say they have moved more than 4,000 dogs to no-kill shelters since 2007.

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