Rescuing the Rescued: Kelsey Thimm and Cedar

Rescued pup takes a detour on the way "home."

This article was originally published in the June 2025 OVERview digital magazine.

Kelsey Thimm, of Vancouver, Washington, adopted Cedar in October 2018 from the Faith and Hope Foundation in Corpus Christi, Texas. The organization finds adoptive homes for the dogs in the Pacific Northwest, then transports them once a month to their new homes.

But the young pup almost didn’t make it to her destination.

A detour on the way "home"

Cedar was 12 weeks old during her transport. As the transport van carrying her and other dogs was traveling through Douglas, Wyoming, it was struck at around 100 mph by another vehicle whose driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. The van drivers were taken to the hospital, but before being removed from the scene, they begged the police officers to save the 47 dogs aboard the van.

The police chief contacted the mayor, whose wife ran the local animal shelter (which could only house 15 dogs). The town rallied together and opened the community center to all the dogs, providing crates and food and making sure they were never left alone.

Cedar (second from the left) in a crate with her siblings, about to be loaded onto a plane to travel from Wyoming to Seattle.

After the dogs received veterinary attention, Dog Is My CoPilot stepped in to fly all of them from Wyoming to the Seattle Humane Society to be united with their adopted families. Founded in 2012, Dog Is My CoPilot is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to transport animals from overcrowded shelters to adoption centers throughout the country; they have two planes in the fleet to ensure at-risk pets have the chance to find their forever homes year-round.

When Cedar finally made it to Kelsey, they quickly became a team.

A new agility team is born

“I took my first agility class with Cedar in the fall of 2021 as something fun and active to do during the pandemic and pretty quickly realized that we should pursue competitive agility together,” Kelsey said. “She is my first agility dog, and a lot of our challenges have come from me learning how to support her as a novice handler. A few trainers have noted that learning the sport of agility with Cedar is like learning to drive in a Ferrari. She gives 120% enthusiasm to anything she’s doing and can be pushy when not consistently held to her training criteria.

Cedar

“We just started trialing with USDAA in March 2024,” she went on, “and Cedar is only a few qualifications away from her first PDCH! We plan to compete at a few regional events throughout this year and potentially attend her first Cynosport_^®  in October.”