[ SHOWGSD-L ] Re: [KatrinaAnimalReliefLA] Workers Trying to Rescue Pets Abandoned in New Or...
- From: Crossroadsgsd@xxxxxxx
- To: showgsd-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 11:15:15 EDT
September 22, 2005
Workers Trying to Rescue Pets Abandoned in New Orleans
By MICHAEL BRICK
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 20 - Up North Claiborne Avenue five dogs ran as a pack
between the
smashed houses under dead power lines, through that twisted junkscape of
lumber and
tin, toilets in the silt, a wall marked "Possible Body" and the headless
Virgin Mary with
arms outstretched. The dogs neither fought nor growled. Among their number
were a
German shepherd, a beagle and a yellow Labrador.
They roam this city gaunt and uncomprehending, at turns frightened and
menacing,
loping directionless between ruined buildings, drinking the muck, staring at
cars, waiting
to die. They are omnipresent. A week ago, their self-appointed rescuers
spoke of the odds
of rejoining them as pets to masters, but that talk has ended. Now these
dogs make for an
infestation, untold thousands unwell, unrestrained, unrecognizable and left
to their
devices.
"I'm afraid that they'll be out here for years," said Wendy Guidry, among
those who spend
their days trying to corral the creatures. "That there'll be a long-term
population of dogs
that will never be caught, that will live on the streets for years and
eventually be hit by
cars. That will be their lives."
The dogs do not lack for sympathy or attendants. From the first days after
Hurricane
Katrina laid waste to this city, images of pets that were left behind
despite protestations
drew crowds of rescue volunteers. Money was gathered and airlifts were
chartered.
Among the crowded flights bound for New Orleans when Louis Armstrong Airport
reopened last week, on planes full of cowboy contractors and corporate
fixers, the earnest
came to save the dogs. On a connection out of Atlanta, Crystal Smith made
the first flight
of her life to come join the Humane Society here. She was afraid of the dogs
she would
find.
"They're becoming vicious," Ms. Smith said. "But it's not because they're
hungry and they
want to eat people. They're scared. They're stressed out; they've been
living on the roof.
And they don't know what you're here for."
More than 400 rescuers are based at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales,
La., 60
miles away, said Julie Morris, director of national outreach for the
American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. With credentials from New Orleans, they
enter the city to
chase animals, and they have captured about 7,000.
How many remain no one knows. Based on human demographics, the American
Veterinary
Medical Association has estimated that 50,000 to 70,000 dogs were kept as
pets in New
Orleans.
"There's nobody who knows how many people successfully evacuated with their
animals,"
Ms. Morris said.
That leaves pets abandoned in the evacuation of the city, the feral
population and the pit
bulls trained to fight for sport, a significant pastime here before the
storm. Rescuers on
the streets said the bigger dogs were dying first.
"We were seeing dogs eating dead dogs," Ms. Guidry said.
Those removed from the city are increasingly diseased. Sixty have been
euthanized in
Gonzales.
"The longer it goes on, the worse that's going to get," Ms. Morris said.
On the streets, though, the dogs are learning to survive. Rescuers, soldiers
and journalists
leave the dogs food, and sometimes the food is gone when the people return.
Rescuers
have found dogs cowering in houses, but many dogs, called runners, remain on
the
streets.
A few blocks away in the Ninth Ward, where packs gather by a breached levee,
three
German shepherds patrolled a smashed wooden rooftop in the tall grass. When
two men
approached, the dogs ran to the near edge of the tar-black rooftop four feet
from the
ground. They raised their heads and craned their necks and barked hoarsely
into the quiet.
The men poured crackers onto the street outside the twisted fence, and two
of the dogs
barked. The third returned to the high point of the roof, where it could see
the broken
levee, and laid its head on the tar.
New York Times
Cathleen Bennett
_www.crossroadsgsd.com_ (http://www.crossroadsgsd.com/)
We have puppies
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