Iraqi Puppies Wiggle Way to U.S.

After surviving war, hunger, a dangerous journey out of Iraq and a plane trip halfway around the world, four puppies and their mother were delivered Monday via Air France cargo to Los Angeles International Airport and the woman who set their rescue in motion.

“I hope they’re OK,” Marcy Christmas, the dog rescuer, fretted as she waited for the puppies she spent three months trying to get out of the Mideast.

But showing no signs of fatigue, the 4-month-old puppies spilled out of two carriers in a warehouse hanger and frolicked in a makeshift pen as Christmas watched, beaming and happily speechless. TV cameras rolled and an airline official snapped photographs. A dozen ground crew staffers lingered with goofy smiles. Terry Jones, a friend of Christmas’, knelt to pet the sad-eyed mother dog who stood just outside her carrier.

“I’m as amazed as you are that this happened,” said Christmas, scarcely believing that three months ago the puppies were starving in Iraq.

The dogs’ 9,375 mile odyssey started Sunday morning when they were picked up in Amman, Jordan, by Air France staffers and taken to the Queen Alia Airport for an international flight. After a brief layover in Paris, where they were walked and watered and checked by a veterinarian, they were put on another plane at Charles de Gaulle Airport and flown to LAX. After clearing customs, their health certificates in order, they were driven to the Air France cargo warehouse.

As homeless Iraqi refugees go, the four skinny puppies -- one black and white, three brown and white, all of an unknown breed -- and their mother have fared better than many, either human or canine. Stray dogs often wandered the barren desert during the war, skirting American military encampments, meeting with varied fates. A U.S. Army sergeant shot one to death, claiming the animal posed a health risk. Troops camped around one of Saddam Hussein’s former presidential palaces, however, cleaned up and adopted a dog they found, letting him roam freely around their camp.

What saved this mother and litter was a brief TV appearance. It was just a snippet of video. Christmas, the 51-year-old widow of character actor Eric Christmas, was watching the ABC Evening News April 10 when she saw a report from the Jordan-Iraq border. The camera panned across the deserted landscape and down upon four forlorn puppies. As the correspondent closed his report, the camera lingered on abandoned military equipment and one puppy standing in the middle of a bleak road.

“That one really got to me,” said Christmas, who has done volunteer work for the Doris Day Animal League and Foundation. Christmas, who lives in a five-bedroom house in Camarillo with five adopted Chihuahuas, has been rescuing dogs for decades.

Clueless about computers, Christmas asked a friend to help her search online for animal welfare agencies in the Iraq area. She got a copy of the ABC News broadcast and the e-mail address of the correspondent.

“I know the reporter didn’t take any” puppies, she said. “I read him the riot act. He could have at least have taken one or two.” A week after she started her search, Christmas discovered the Humane Center for Animal Welfare, which was co-founded by Margaret and Peter Ledger in Amman three years ago. It turned out the center staff had plans to cross into Iraq as soon as possible.

“Actually, we were going to Iraq to save gazelles,” said Margaret Ledger, director of the center. It had been asked to help feed 1,500 starving gazelles confined to a preserve about 80 miles from the Jordan-Iraq border in Rutbah. The Ledgers were waiting for the border to open when Christmas called and described the puppies.

The Ledgers, their education director, a veterinarian and another helper finally set off in a convoy from Amman to the border on May 25, carting five tons of feed for the gazelles. They were escorted by two American military men, Capt. Marc Baader and Maj. Mike Kupchick. The center had helped Baader make arrangements to send two cats he had found to his family back in the United States. Along the way, Jordanian military officials helped them traverse a no-man’s land before they were securely into Iraq and on their way to Rutbah.

The group searched in vain for the puppies as they went. It was only after leaving Rutbah and stopping on their way back to the border in the village of Al Amanieh that they came across six puppies, two more than Christmas had seen on television, and their mother, so weak she could barely stand.

“Somehow, everyone was taking care of the puppies,” said Margaret Ledger. They had gone from foraging through rubbish to eating whatever scraps Iraqi families and American military men gave them. In fact, one Iraqi family had adopted one puppy and a U.S. serviceman had adopted another. Ledger scooped up the remaining four and put them in vans for the long ride back to Amman. The sickly mother, whom Ledger christened Rutbah, rode beside her in the van.

After more than a month of food and vitamins, all the dogs have gained weight.

“We really got attached to them,” Ledger said. “They stayed right next to our office. We would give them a ball or a toy.”

Of the puppies that arrived Monday, only one is from the group that Christmas saw on television that April evening. That puppy turned out to belong to a different litter -- which Margaret Ledger stumbled across with their mother. That’s the fluffy black and white one that immediately caught the eye of cargo handler Francine Palomarez, who has asked to adopt her.

Christmas told Margaret Ledger before the trip into Iraq that she would take any dogs Ledger found. And Christmas said, “We’re still looking for the puppies on that broadcast.”

Christmas said she will put the dogs that arrived Monday up for adoption. Well, maybe not all of them. “I’ll probably keep at least one of them,” she said.

She also said she will reimburse the Ledgers’ organization for the approximately $1,200 flight. There are, she said, “worse ways to spend $1,000.”

*

Times staff writer Geoffrey Mohan contributed to this report.