Lawyer pilot: Puppy mission accomplished.

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Ft. Lauderdale lawyer Larry Ploucha's longtime passion to fly has taken on a warm, fuzzy, face-licking new purpose.

Folding down the back seat of his four-seater Mooney airplane, he made room to hold a litter of four Labrador retriever puppies (the fifth one was so cute it got adopted by a flying buddy before he made it out of the airport).

The eight-week-old pups needed to be flown from Miami to Tampa in order to save their lives and find adoptive homes, all coordinated through a nonprofit organization called Pilots N Paws.

"The thought of them getting the needle does not sit well," says Ploucha, a self-described cat man who loves all animals.

Piloting the plane with his good friend Lloyd Zand, a retired radiologist, Ploucha looked back at his precious cargo with floppy ears and big brown eyes, and said the droning of the engine stopped their whining, and they settled in for the ride of their lives.

The puppy mission was transporting them from the Kendall Tamiami Executive Airport in Southwest Miami to the Tampa Executive Airport.

"The arrangements were well coordinated. We offloaded the puppies and were on our way," Ploucha said.

It was Zand who first got Ploucha involved in Pilots N Paws about two years ago, a South Carolina-based nonprofit organization founded in 2008 to help transport animals to no-kill shelters that otherwise would be euthanized.

Pilotsnpaws.org, the organization's website, is how 3,168 pilot volunteers coordinate where their flying services are needed to move dogs, cats, and even pigs, reptiles, and rabbits.

Happy endings are plentiful.

There's the story about Radar, a pit bull left for dead on the side of the road in Philadelphia and believed to have been forced into dog fighting, flown to Cleveland for rehabilitation.

Another account details how a deaf puppy was flown from Midland, Texas, to a special rescue facility for animals with special needs in Katy, Texas, where the dog is learning sign language.

As Ploucha describes, there are special mass movements a couple of times a year, such as when pilots flew in...