Plane pilot's pet project is aiding animals
Cathy Free
Although she never has repeat customers, she gives them all first-class treatment. Cruising in luxury at 11,500 feet sure beats riding in a hot car with your head out the window, she says.
For the past two years, Juliette, volunteer coordinator for the Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab, has used her four-seat, twin-engine plane to shuttle everything from terriers to tarantulas to new homes across the country.
"I'm a dog person — I don't like spiders," she admits with a grin. "But if putting them in my plane means they'll get to a proper home, I'll take them."
It all started after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when Juliette offered to fly volunteers and supplies to the Gulf Coast after all the major airports were shut down. She spent the next two months helping to rescue stranded pets and reunite them with their owners or find the animals new homes. On her way back to Kanab with 15 cats and dogs, Juliette stopped along the way to deliver a homeless family of tarantulas to a spider zoo in Alabama.
Eager to hear her story, I recently shared a Free Lunch chat with Juliette during a break at the sanctuary. A petite woman with soft brown eyes and a crisp English accent, she laughs when asked how she ended up in the Utah desert. "It's been a long journey," she says, "but I can honestly say this is home now. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."
An only child who was born and raised in London, Juliette has always had a unique relationship with animals. After her father died when she was 10, she convinced her mother to buy her a horse, which she kept in a stable next to MGM Studios. To make extra money, she learned to do movie stunt work, riding her horse in medieval battle scenes and racing around a track in "International Velvet."
When it became hard to pay for the horse's upkeep and it had to be sold, Juliette, then 16, went to work as a card dealer in London's Playboy Club casino. In 1980, she ended up in Manhattan, writing scripts for the soap opera "One Life to Live." One night, she and her husband, Jason, were channel-surfing when they came across a program about people who spent their vacations volunteering at Best Friends — the country's largest no-kill animal shelter.
After flying to Kanab to try it themselves, "I knew where I was meant to be," says Juliette. Today, she coordinates volunteers in the sanctuary's "dog town," when she isn't transporting miniature horses, cats, dogs and an occasional Komodo dragon in her airplane.
Recent comments
Wow she is a great lady. I wish I knew her info and see how much…
Lacey | Aug. 9, 2008 at 1:32 a.m.
Thanks for telling us about Juliette Watt -- this was a fun story…
Allyson P. | Aug. 16, 2007 at 5:02 p.m.
I have adopted from Best Friends before, but didn't know they had…
Joseph | Aug. 16, 2007 at 3:14 p.m.
