Are you coming? There’s a ground swell of support now responding to everyone’s requests to come help!

What to do.

1. Fly into a local city and rent a big SUV, minivan or budget rental type of truck. Many times the budget type or hauling trucks are cheaper than card. I have been driving one for two weeks. Check local yellow pages for moving trucks. I got mine at Jackson mini storage. G
2. Get to the Gonzales Lamar Dixon expo cent for the 6 am meeting and get supplies. It’s extremely confusing about what you should be doing. Many don’t go because we’d rather be in the city working at 6 o’clock. They have a volunteer boot somewhere that you can chick on. I never did that. If any one from HSUS is reading this, sign me up
3. Come to the YMCA on Philip St off St. Charles. Come with a lot of patience since many people are rally stressed. Our place is going to look like a disaster zone after this hurricane but someone will put it back together and get rolling again. Day after storm.
4. Here are directions to YMCA: 10 east to the causeway south to the Jefferson St exit. Left on Jefferson toward New Orleans. Jefferson turns into Claiborne. A few miles down you are looking for Phillips you’ll see 1, 2, and 3rd before you seen. Take a right on Phillip and go up to Simon Bolivar continue on Philip (a little confusing as Philip seems to be a little disjointed. But you are within two blocks or so) you are looking for the 2000 bloc of Philip. Try to bring feeding supplies with you. Lots of dry and canned cat food and dog food, bowls, leashes and collars which can be gotten at the Gonzales supply center.

We are trying to work with the HSUS to use the YMCA as a drop off point to process animals and not have to drive them all the way back to Gonzales every couple of hours to feed and drop off animals so we don’t have to spend all day driving instead of rescuing animals. HSUS doesn’t seem to want to listen but I am going to keep talking to them about it every day.

Post Rita

The first day back after the storm we are going to start blasting the list of the owner call ins. This is the list of thousands of people who called the much published HSUS 800 number to report a trapped pet. Many of these people probably think that HSUS, with all their money and support, got the list into hands of rescuers. They have not. Finally, people who were so amazed about this, took the list and started to get it data processed and put into simple mapping programs. I told them to do this two weeks ago and even offered to direct them to db companies who could help! Think about this. HSUS virtually promised on ads and internet marketing that they would try to rescue their pets. I hear this list is over 20k and could be much larger. These are leads for rescuers to go directly where there is a pet. Will we ever get it? Who knows at this point? But if you called them and think that your pet has been saved, think again. You’d be better off just calling local groups like us on the ground and giving us the information again.

What we need from HSUS to succeed. (Most of the people at the YMCA are savvy HSUS volunteers who just got sick of the bureaucracy anyway. They are getting the job done anyway) But if we had these things we could really go to town next week.)

1. 10-15 laborers as they are using at Gonzales which is really a mess after these many days.
2. The list of call ins for GOSH SAKES! I told them 2 weeks ago that I could have it data processed and mapped in two hours. I finally got them to give the list to dogdetective.com and she’s doing it for them. I am not even sure if she has the entire list though.
3. Shuttles to get animals to Lamar Dixon from the YMCA. Rescuers need to rescue from dawn into the night and not have to worry about driving an hour and a half to drop off a few animals at Lamar Dixon - what a complete waste of time.
4. Experienced intake people to take the animals as they come into the YMCA. This insures that a total record is kept so that they are processed and owners can locate them. We need this experience from HSUS.
5. Just a few people to help us to handle the animals once we get here and before they get on the truck: vet techs, bathers, feeders and walkers.

We can still save thousands of pets.

Nothing is slowing down. We are still finding many alive! An incredible story from yesterday. A pit bull mother and her puppy were found left in a crate in her house with no food and water, still alive after we broke the door. They were in horrible shape but from what I hear, once they got water they perked up right away. Case in point we had to get two people to take them back to Gonzales. And their day was basically over. This is a game of logistics and the people in the field have proven this by saving 1000 upon 1000s of animals that they are capable. We try not to do anything to take us away from rescuing. We rescued last night with spot lights until almost 10 o’clock. The police and guard pull us over and say “Great job. Get it done.” We simply need more hours and more people to get these lists done.

Please HSUS get us 150 spotlights. We have got plenty of people to work late into the night or at least until dark. Most innovation like this comes from the field. Thousands of people have come down here and innovated with success but HSUS simply doesn’t want to see this success in front of their eyes.

Why don’t you all start emailing HSUS about what is going on on the ground? Not at Lamar Dixon but in the field. I have never seen a single person from HSUS except Jane. I have never heard an HSUS higher up ask a rescuer what exactly they need. I’ve camped out on their doorsteps to tell them but eyes are rolled and nothing is done. These people should come work the field for one day. All we are asking for is their help and we will get thousands of animals out next week. Many people are getting the feeling that HSUS is ready to wind down and use the hurricane as an excuse. They should prove with their action that this is simply not true. HSUS’ problem right now is that in the age of the internet they simply cannot get away with hiding anything. Everyone says that my information is right on down here. I have been fair to all parties - giving credit where credit is due. Looked for ways to improve. Everything I have put in this bog is very accurate. None of it is second hand. Most of it I have seen with my own two eyes

Would you believe that 20 of us came into the city today to rescue after going to Gonzales to hear rumor after rumor about the weather. Its 3 o’clock, it has barely rained and the police and guard know we are here and just asked that we leave about hours before dark. We got another days work in just by being proactive. We are not even at risk we have a direct contact at the police dept and at that guards and two people watching local weather and news constantly. Doesn’t take much smarts to know when a hurricane is 200 miles away to know when it will be here. Police said just give them a call and they will escort us out. The rumor mill at HSUS was that the city was under water so no body came in. The entire little guerrilla people seem to have the best intelligence.

I am going to go now. An hour or so to go before we can get out of the city – time to rescue a couple more animals still. But we will be back the second the weather permits. You simply don't understand the determination of the feet on the street rescuers Met a guy last night who a slept in his boat for two nights in St Bernard’s parish where the water had been as much as 30 feet high.

Any one who can get the word to HSUS to get us the simple help we need - please do so!

We all plan working at night next week so someone buy or deliver to us those spotlights.