Goodyear Gives a Lift to Snoopy and a Squad of Future Service Dog Puppies

The Goodyear Blimp has hauled a lot of unusual cargo over the past century, but on October 1, 2025, it added a new entry to the manifest: a small group of ten-week-old future service dogs, escorted by Snoopy. The flight, organized by Goodyear together with Canine Companions and Peanuts, marked the first time in the airship’s 100-year history that puppies have been flown to their volunteer puppy raisers aboard the iconic airship. CBS Los Angeles reported three pups made the trip.

It is, on its face, a marketing event. It is also a genuinely charming use of the airship most Americans are likely to recognize overhead.

A Triple Anniversary in the Air
The flight knit together three milestones that happened to land in the same year. Goodyear is marking 100 years since Pilgrim, its first branded blimp, took flight on June 3, 1925. Peanuts is celebrating 75 years since Charles Schulz’s comic strip first appeared in newspapers in 1950. Canine Companions, the California-based nonprofit that effectively invented the modern service-dog industry in 1975, reaches 50.

Jeannie Schulz, widow of the Peanuts creator and a longtime Canine Companions board member, framed the symbolism in the official announcement, noting “Sparky’s affection for dogs” and her delight that Snoopy got to ride along. (Sparky was Charles Schulz’s lifelong nickname, given to him as a baby after the racehorse Spark Plug from the Barney Google comic strip.) Canine Companions CEO Paige Mazzoni added that the partnership gave the puppies a “sky-high sendoff” before their working lives begin.

Watch CBS reporting of the event below:

The Airship Doing the Lifting
The aircraft involved is Wingfoot Three, the Carson, California-based member of Goodyear’s three-ship U.S. fleet. Despite the “blimp” branding Goodyear has kept in place, Wingfoot Three and its siblings are technically Zeppelin NT (Neue Technologie, German for “New Technology”) semi-rigid airships, model LZ N07-101, developed by Germany’s Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik and assembled with Goodyear at Wingfoot Lake in Ohio. A true blimp holds its shape entirely through internal gas pressure in the gas envelope. The Zeppelin NT is built around an internal carbon-fiber and aluminum truss. The gondola, engines, and tail surfaces are all mounted to that frame rather than to the envelope fabric alone.

That structural difference shows in performance. The NTs are bigger, faster, and more nimble than the GZ-20 blimps Goodyear flew for decades. They measure 246 ft (75 m) long, about 54 ft (16 m) more than the older ships, and top out around 73 mph (117 km/h) compared with roughly 50 mph (80 km/h). They also carry three vectored-thrust engines, meaning the propellers can swivel to push the airship up, down, forward, or hold it in place. That last capability helps make the NT useful as a low-altitude camera platform over stadiums, and it surely is an asset when the day’s cargo is three precious little service-dog puppies.

Wingfoot Three entered service in 2018, christened by record-setting pilot Shaesta Waiz at Goodyear’s Wingfoot Lake base in Ohio.

Long Beach to the South Bay
According to CBS Los Angeles’ on-the-ground reporting, the flight departed Long Beach, passed over Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, and touched down in Carson, where Canine Companions’ volunteer puppy raisers met the puppies.

Natalie Nuse, executive director of Canine Companions’ Southwest training center, told CBS the trip went smoothly. “There wasn’t a dull moment, I can tell you that right now. The puppies were great and Snoopy was a blast.”

Where the Puppies Go From Here
Canine Companions puppies usually travel by plane to reach their volunteer puppy raisers, who are scattered across the country. Those volunteers spend the next 16 to 18 months handling the foundation work: house manners, basic obedience, and the broad socialization a service dog needs before it ever sees professional task training. The nonprofit said in its October announcement that it has placed more than 8,300 expertly trained dogs since 1975, all at no cost to the recipients, who include children, adults, and veterans with disabilities.

For these three puppies, the blimp flight was probably the most dramatic commute they will ever take. Their next 16 to 18 months will involve substantially less helium and considerably more crate training.

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