Bobby Silcott wants to outfit every Maine ambulance with snout-friendly oxygen masks.

It’s a dream. A mission. And, for the animal control officer with two dogs of his own, a passion.

“I’m really hoping when I’m dead and gone, these things are still around and helping animals,” he said.

Silcott, 49, of Naples, last year started the POM Project, an initiative to get pet oxygen masks on every ambulance and oxygen-equipped firetruck in the state. The dome-shaped masks fit snugly around an animal’s muzzle, helping rescue workers revive animals that inhaled smoke during a house fire. Although workers have used human masks on pets in the past, animal masks are more likely to work with an animal’s physiology.

Masks come in sets of three: small for cats, medium for small dogs and large for big dogs and some large animals. Sets cost $75 each.

Silcott, a member of the board for Harvest Hills Animal Shelter in Fryeburg, decided last year to get the masks for the 19 towns Harvest Hills serves. A volunteer firefighter and licensed EMT, he’d seen exactly how fire could devastate a family. The masks, he thought, could help reduce at least part of that devastation.

“The SPCA estimates 40,000 pets die across the country every year from smoke inhalation. I don’t have the numbers in Maine, but I do know when we leave a fire scene, those people’s lives are still going on. And depending on how bad it is, the emotional toll that’s taken on these folks, if you can save the family pet, it’s quite possibly the emotional glue that’s going to hold them together after such a devastating event,” he said. “One of the first things people want to know, particularly if they’re not home, is if their pets are OK.”

Sillcott began offering pet CPR and first aid classes as a way to pay for those 19 masks. But soon word of his effort got out. A businessman offered to help — and wrote a check for more than $1,200 to go toward the masks.

“I was just lit up like a Christmas tree. I was so excited, and the more I got thinking about it, I’m like, ‘Why stop now?'” he said. 

The POM Project would get masks for every municipality that could use them, he decided. 

So far, he’s supplied 62 sets of masks to towns as far away as Berwick and Rockland. Sometimes, towns or ambulance services contact him. Other times, Silcott contacts them, focusing on areas that donations have come from and that don’t already have masks. He hopes soon to get the masks into Lewiston-Auburn.

“I’m working on that,” he said. “That’s the next big nut to crack.”

The nonprofit initiative relies on the money Silcott brings in from donations and his animal CPR and first aid classes. It has no administrative or operating budget.

“I’m in the hole. Personally, I spend money on it sometimes,” Silcott said. 

Silcott runs the initiative as a side project in addition to his work as animal control officer for five Lakes Region-area towns, as a Harvest Hills board member and as a member of one response team that prepares for disasters that can affect animals and another that rescues large animals in an emergency. But while the POM project has taken both time and money, he believes the potential to save pets’ lives is worth it. 

“It’s an incredible feeling, it really is,” he said. “I can’t wrap my mind around what (pet owners) are going through. All I know is that it’s saved a pet for them, and it’s a really good thing.”

ltice@sunjournal.com

For more information on the POM Project:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Maine-POM-Project/109983675697408