The Forgotten Ones: Whether it be 4 or 4000 they deserve our help!
Please enter your email on the right so I can stay in touch with this great network of people that cares so much about our work!!!
VOLUNTEERS STILL NEEDED.
Please visit www.animalrescueneworleans.com about volunteering.
AnimalRescueNewOrleans.com
See great Video’s Below of my 2nd trip to New Orleans Nov 12-Nov 16th (Videos are in Quicktime and needed placed in a new Browser).
Best Friends Comprehensive Assessment Of Gulf Region
Read Assessment
Best Friends Petition to bring money dedicated for Katrina Animals Back to the region
SignThePetition
This week was marked by lots of data showing that the entire GulF Region has serious and continued animal welfare problems from Katrina and Rita. New Olreans got lots of attention. It irks me to no end that big groups went in for a month or so and then lost interest. Best Friends deserves our praise. They are still on the ground, they are spending money, they are intaking animals and they are helping out with EVERY situation that comes to their attention. They also spent money on an assessment of the entire Gulf area and determind that we still have much work to do.
My Day 1 Trapping Results, Nov 12, 2005:
If we are bringing in these kinds of numbers with a small # of traps then just extrapolate out to see how many animals still need rescued....
ARNO: 27 dogs (I was on site and counted myself)
Winn Dixie: 13 Dogs
LASPCA: 30 dogs (approx as reported by them)
Muttshack: 9 dogs
X 7 DAYS = would be 553 total for week. Some disasters only have that number total for the entire disaster. (Note: other days appeared consistent with this and yesterday Nov 18th Animal Rescue New Orleans brought in 32 both cats and dogs).
This week Alley Cat Allies and ARNO trapped approximately 50 cats from one trailer park to be bulldozed. This was in Jefferson Parish.
It is my belief because of what I have now seen with my own eyes is that these numbers of trapped animals can be retained by all groups and increased with more traps and with more places to Export animals. It does not take long in the field with “Navy Seal” type trapping teams to locate many packs of animals.
A Navy Seal trapping team uses intelligence to find hiding packs. The people I was out with had 8 different units of the National Guard telling them where they saw animals as they drove around ALL night. The Guard are the only ones on the streets 24/7 and they patrol a dedicated area seeing everything. Even when they told us specifically where packs of animals were it took us hours to find where the pack consolidated at night. You simply don't see many of these animals.
Here is my video: (you must put each link in your browser) Please do not cut and past my video to other site but please refer people to my website to watch so that I can collect email addresses for the future!
Video #1:
http://revenue-dev.bulkregister.com/rescue/dogshollynick.mov
This is dogs coming in by 1 trapping team (27 that day total), Holly at morning meeting talk, and Nicky an ACO and responder to many disaster situations:
Video #2:
http://revenue-dev.bulkregister.com/rescue/chows.mov
Pack of Chows found and trapped. One chow was missing an ear see picture below.
Video #3:
http://revenue-dev.bulkregister.com/rescue/coverall.mov
An experienced trapper describes the animals she brought in and tells how she is finding multiple packs.
Video #4:
http://revenue-dev.bulkregister.com/rescue/corrolla.mov
Trapper Corolla with multiple years experience explains what she sees in the field.
News Clip on 50 Cats Rescued in Kenner:
http://www.wafb.com/Global/category.asp?C=38708
Pictures:
Chow with ear gone and rotted. Luckily Best Friends has vets.
Lab trapped with Pack of 20 dogs located in brick yard. Just as Friendly as he was 3 months ago.
Same Lab as above after I made my friend Jim rent a car 1 way and drive him 22 hours to my house in Maryland. Jim loved me for that.
Pit in same pack of 20
Does this Pit look agressive? It is the one in the page above.
Brick Yard where the pack of 20 dogs live. This is why it is so hard to find animals. This yard had one entrance but once inside you found animals everywhere.
Recent Morning Meeting where they talk about respect for the citizens and laws of the state
Video #1:
Dogs, Holly, Nick (Quicktime, 60MB)
This is dogs coming
in by 1 trapping team (27 that day total), Holly at morning meeting talk, and
Nicky an ACO and responder to many disaster situations:
Video #2:
Chows (Quicktime, 19MB)
Pack of Chows found and trapped. One chow was missing an ear see picture below.
Video #3: target="new">Coverall (Quicktime, 2MB)
An experienced trapper
describes the animals she brought in and tells how she is finding multiple
packs.
Video #4:
Corrolla (Quicktime, 56MB)
My old favorite stuff:
1. My own favorite Post:
Click here
2. Best video footage: Click here
3. This blog has the BEST PICTURES so far of Katrina Animals. It is all pics and good ones
Click here Warning pics of dead animals.
4. School shooting story WITHOUT ANY GORY PICS -- and ton of other great pics
Click here
5. And this is one of our groups blogs --
Click here
6. Most amazing photography: I mean must see:
Click here
7. To reunite pets with owners:
Click here
8. Watch a Pitbull video
Click Here
9. Chat makes it home after being dognapped by Brew Beagle for 8 weeks http://booknote.blogspot.com/ (nov 23 blog entry)
10. Vermillion Parish Needs Help http://vermillionanimalaid.blogspot.com/
posted by EricsDogBlog.com @ Saturday, November 19, 2005
123 comments
123 Comments:
SPCA survey finds few animals still abandoned
But rescue groups say multitude remain
source- http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-4/113238579935800.xml
Saturday, November 19, 2005
By Bruce Eggler
Staff writer
A systematic survey of key New Orleans neighborhoods this week by teams of animal-welfare workers found few stray and uncared-for animals, the Louisiana SPCA said Friday.
"In general, the majority of the team members were surprised by the low number of animals spotted in a city that has typically had a high stray population," SPCA Executive Director Laura Maloney said. "Animals appeared to be of normal weight, with a couple of dogs slightly thin."
The survey's findings appear to support Maloney's statements last week to the New Orleans City Council disputing claims by some animal rescuers that New Orleans still has thousands of dogs and cats left homeless and in many cases starving since Hurricane Katrina drove their owners from the city.
Maloney's statements to the council produced an outpouring of protests from some animal-rights activists, who said rescue teams are continuing to find large numbers of abandoned pets in Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes.
The groups Animal Rescue New Orleans and Alley Cat Allies said this week they rescued 50 cats Wednesday from a trailer park in Kenner and 13 cats, 17 puppies and 22 dogs Monday from other sites. The groups are seeking additional volunteers to search more than 3,000 sites where they say animals have been reported hiding under porches and homes.
Anne Bell of the Southern Animal Foundation said rescuers saved hundreds of animals in the past two weeks.
Although the SPCA survey did not find large numbers of animals, Maloney said, "teams agree that there are more strays than appeared during our study." But the survey did not support the claims by some volunteer rescuers "that there are many more animals waiting to be rescued," she said.
Many of the volunteer rescuers say daytime surveys fail to discover large numbers of animals that stay under or inside buildings during the day and come out only at night.
Maloney said the SPCA sent two-member teams to survey sections of five "hot spots": Lakeview, eastern New Orleans, Gentilly, the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish. All the areas were hit hard by post-Katrina flooding, and few residents have returned to live in them.
The teams toured their assigned areas for two days, from 6 to 9 a.m. and from 5 to 8 p.m., times when animals typically are most active, Maloney said.
"They were asked to look under houses, search behind brush and other hiding spots, search for animal tracks, and to speak to residents and workers about their animal sightings. Teams used bait to lure pets to the area while assessors watched from afar," she said.
"Each team saw an average of three dogs and three cats during their three-hour assessment period. All animals appeared to be in good flesh condition. A couple of animals showed lameness in one of their legs," Maloney said.
The assessment teams included staff members of the Humane Society of the United States, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Best Friends Animal Society, American Humane Association, United Animal Nations, U.S. Public Health Service, Louisiana SPCA, St. Bernard Parish Animal Control, Nebraska Humane Society and Humane Society of Missouri, plus "individual rescuers who have been working in New Orleans since the beginning of the rescue effort" after Katrina, Maloney said.
Animal-control officers are trapping between 15 and 30 dogs and cats a night, and the Best Friends shelter in Tylertown, Miss., is accepting 20 to 30 animals a day, Maloney said. "Other groups are also trapping some animals. Approximately one-third of the animals have collars; some have tags."
Maloney said the Louisiana SPCA will soon hire an experienced trapper provided by the Humane Society of the United States to conduct a comprehensive four- to six-week trapping program in the city.
Her agency also will soon launch "an aggressive spay and neuter program, offer a rabies and microchipping drive to New Orleans residents" and resume its animal adoption program, she said.
*For Immediate Release
Contact: Ms. Stafford Scott 504-491-4249
LA/SPCA Completes Multi-Agency
Post-Katrina Animal Assessment
NEW ORLEANS (November 18, 2005) - The multi-agency assessment team convened by the Louisiana SPCA to assess the state-of-animals in the city has completed its work.
The team’s goals were a) to obtain a sense of the post-hurricane stray population and b) to determine animals’ health condition. The LA/SPCA will use the results and discussion to tailor its animal response efforts to match the needs of the community.
The assessment team included two professionals each from the Humane Society of the United States, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Best Friends Animal Society, American Humane Association, United Animal Nations, U.S. Public Health Service, LA/SPCA, St. Bernard Parish Animal Control, and visiting staff from the Nebraska Humane Society and Humane Society of Missouri who are here working day-by-day with the LA/SPCA. The team also included individual rescuers who have been working in New Orleans since the beginning of the rescue effort to save animals following the disaster.
Process
Two-person teams, each person representing a different organization, were assigned a search area in one of five hot spots – Lakeview, East, Gentilly, Lower 9th ward, and St. Bernard. Each team worked the same area from 6am to 9am and 5pm to 8pm. They were asked to look under houses, search behind brush and other hiding spots, search for animal tracks, and to speak to residents and workers about their animal sightings. Teams used bait to lure pets to the area while assessors watched from afar.
Results
Each team saw an average of three dogs and three cats during their three-hour assessment period. All animals appeared to be in good flesh condition. A couple of animals showed lameness in one of their legs.
Discussion
Although not a scientific or statistically accurate study, this exercise attempted to assess the health condition of the animals in unpopulated areas of the city as well as to evaluate the number of animals roaming at large at a time of day when animals are typically most active.
In general, the majority of the team members were surprised by the low number of animals spotted in a city that has typically had a high stray population. Animals appeared to be of normal weight with a couple dogs slightly thin. During our assessment period, rescuers noted that they are seeing various health problems ranging from fleas to emaciation in the animals they are receiving.
Some areas of the city had a higher number of feeding stations than other areas. Some teams left fresh food and revisited the station during the next shift. A few stations had been visited by animals, but many were not utilized.
Workers and residents did not report seeing high numbers of animals, but did comment on seeing a few animals occasionally.
Although not sizably visible during our assessment, teams agree that there are more strays than appeared during our study. Some of the volunteer rescuers believe that there are many more animals waiting to be rescued, who could not be quantified during this assessment.
Animal Control is humane trapping between 15-30 dogs and cats a night and the Best Friends shelter in Tylertown, MS, is accepting approximately 20-30 animals a day. Other groups are also trapping some animals. Approximately one-third of the animals have collars; some have tags.
Unlike other cities following a disaster, residents have not been able to return to the hardest-hit areas making it difficult for strays to find food sources. There is concern that animals, including wildlife, will not be able to sustain themselves over the long-term.
The city has a unique opportunity, due to the manageable number of animals remaining, to get a handle on the strays before they begin to breed.
Next Steps
There is still much work to be done. To take advantage of New Orleans’ unique opportunity to get a grasp on its stray population, the LA/SPCA will contract with a high-volume, experienced humane trapper being provided by the Humane Society of the United States to manage a comprehensive 4-6 week program. Both national and local groups are willing to provide staff and volunteer trappers that will be trained and dispatched from Animal Control.
Animals that are caught via humane trapping will be triaged at the Animal Control facility. Local sheltering partners such as Best Friends may take the animals to their facilities where they will hold them for a minimum of five-days to allow owners an opportunity to locate their pets. All incoming animals are placed on petharbor.com to give owners an opportunity to locate their companion.
Although the LA/SPCA’s full-service veterinary clinic was destroyed, they will soon launch an aggressive spay and neuter program and offer a rabies and microchipping drive to New Orleans’ residents. In the next few weeks, they will be reintroducing their off-site adoption program.
“We wish to thank the agencies and individuals who gave their time and expertise to participate in the multi-agency assessment. Our joint efforts resulted in a coordinated trapping campaign that will effectively capture remaining animals. We and the animals in our community have been blessed with incredible support from our colleagues around the country,” said Laura Maloney, Executive Director of the LA/SPCA.
If you have lost a pet or believe an animal needs help, please call animal control at (504) 368-5191, ext 100. If you see an animal in a neighbor’s yard and you’re not sure he/she has returned, please call us immediately. If you’re trying to locate a pet that may have been rescued in the disaster area, please visit both www.petharbor.com and www.petfinder.com.
The Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (LA/SPCA) is a private non-profit organization dedicated to the elimination of animal suffering. Chartered in 1888, it is the oldest and most comprehensive animal welfare organization in the state of Louisiana providing care and basic medical services for approximately 11,000 homeless and unwanted animals each year. The LA/SPCA is a membership organization that depends upon the support of the public. The LA/SPCA asks that you demand to see official identification from animal welfare agents to ensure proper authority.
I was part of the survey. Big agencies way of being able justify leaving the area after taking millions. They saw 100 animals at night with 8 teams. Ok now multiply that by another 1,000 areas they didn't see plus x by 3 for the animals that hide very well. They also would not take real numbers trapped and use those to justify how many animals remain.
They seem content to say that "the problem is better" than it was before Katrina because they had thousands of strays. I on the other hand say that you now have peoples pets and not strays out on the streets. What is the ethical thing to do for a population of citizens that have lost everything?
We all came to the conclusion that each group would do what it thinks needs done without bickering with other groups or calling names.
Several of the big groups understand that many animals remain and have committed more funds to support the small groups.
Eric Rice
Eric: I hope that you will write a letter to the editor to both of those publications to "broaden" the info in those two articles!
My 2 cents about the survey, for anyone who cares to listen.
I wrote this in response to post 30122.4.2 who said,
"please understand i am a rescuer that has been down here for over 8 weeks. I do not want to stop rescuing and know that there are many Pets still out there. But I do ask yall to stop this about the survey. Truly, I do not believe it was flawed. and yes, I was on one of the assessment teams. We werent trapping. We were doing what we often do at night looking for animals. It is not a science. Also, there was alot more to determine than numbers. So yall are kinda of blowing one point out of proportion. We are still continuing to rescue and that is important. Much of the damage that has been done to us grassroots type of orgs. in the SPCA's eyes is the bad PR and much of it comes from these forums. Please support us in our continuing effort down here. We are being allowed to help reunite these pets with owners or find them new homes and get them off the streets. Also, please remember....that is the ONLY reason we are here to begin with. thanksFYI...Eric was only there for 1/2 of 1 day. He was not at the debriefing or when we went over our results. There is much more than he reported."
------------
Too bad Eric wasn't at the debriefing ... he might have saved you all from that embarrassment of a press release.
Whenever a survey is taken that will affect the outcome of a project and its funding, it should be scientifically and statistically sound. That's the only way to give it credibility.
The press release was skimpy on the kinds of details we need to assess the quality of the data. This survey should have produced a report containing preliminary assumptions about the animals' behaviors, how sampling areas were selected, how observations were made, how the data was interpreted, and some indication of the level of uncertainty in the results. There are people at the USGS who do statistical wildlife studies, and they should have been consulted in crafting this survey.
Here's how the PR described the process:
"Two-person teams, each person representing a different organization, were assigned a search area in one of five hot spots – Lakeview, East, Gentilly, Lower 9th ward, and St. Bernard. Each team worked the same area from 6am to 9am and 5pm to 8pm. They were asked to look under houses, search behind brush and other hiding spots, search for animal tracks, and to speak to residents and workers about their animal sightings. Teams used bait to lure pets to the area while assessors watched from afar."
That is really really vague. You are not telling me what I need to know to make a judgment about the credibility of your results.
For instance:
- What kinds of assumptions were made about animals' behaviors and conditions when designing the survey?
- What's the definition of a "hot spot"?
- Was it one team per "hot spot" or several per "hot spot"? If several, were they assigned particular blocks or told to search randomly? That's not clear.
- What was the environment of the survey area: fields? thick woods? Single-family home neighborhoods? Downtown? Near a pond or lake? In areas still largely deserted, or with returned residents?
- Was the data collected in one day, or over several consecutive days?
- What were the weather conditions that could have affected animal behavior during the time of observations?
- How were observing windows determined? The PR says that's "when animals typically are most active". These are not typical times. We are dealing with pets that are semi-feral, on their way to either dying or becoming feral, or a hazard to people. Is "typical" referring to normal pre-Katrina circumstances, or based on recent observations of animal activity?
- Looking under houses, behind brush, etc.. If the animal isn't weak, it's more likely to run off as a person approaches the site? Were residents and workers eyewitness accounts weighed according to time of day and locations? I don't understand this baiting technique, it should have been explained.
Too many unanswered questions ....
I am not a professional field biologist. But I have volunteered in wildlife surveys that had well-defined protocols, so I've seen, first-hand, the value of having a well-designed survey. Please don't ask me to just trust you and take your word for it. WE NEED MORE INFORMATION ABOUT HOW THE SURVEY WAS CONDUCTED TO HAVE CONFIDENCE IN THE RESULTS.
But who cares what I have to say ... the decision has been made. Many lucky animals will be rescued by ARNO, ACA, DRAR, and LA-SPCA over the next few weeks. HSUS is supposed to be helping out in an intensive 4-6 week trap and neuter program, and I hope it's very soon. But what many of us were hoping for, more support for Jane's group from large rescue organizations to launch a very large trapping program to save most of these pets, will not happen.
Whatever the survey results and decisions made, I just wish Bruce Eggler would get off his butt and ACTUALLY DO SOME INVESTIGATIVE RESEARCH for himself by going along either with Jane's group or one of the other rescue groups for at least one day "in the field"; instead of regurgitating whatever he is fed by the "powers that be"! He sounds like Maloney's parrot, instead of a professional journalist. (Obviously not a candidate for a Pulitzer for good reporting. He needs to retake Journalism 101.) Aren't there ANY reporters on the Times Picayune or other NO papers interested in doing a story with some actual background research? I challenge any decent reporter (and photographer team) to step forward and at least write a "first hand" account after riding along with one of the "grassroots rescue groups". Maybe even for a student newspaper which might be picked up by the one of the bigger papers. I think the whole world has the right to hear/read the other side of the untold story for a change ...
I don't think decent, objective reporting is too much to ask for even from a beginning Staff Writer. FOR GOSH SAKES GO OUT IN THE FIELD, SEE FOR YOURSELF, CHECK THE FACTS BEFORE YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH AGAIN IN PUBLIC!! DO YOU HAVE FEET, EYES, EARS... A MIND OF YOUR OWN... A BACKBONE?! Go write what YOU SEE, WHAT YOU FEEL, for once what YOU know to be fact. Be an honest to goodness investigative field reporter not just a hack desk jockey. Aren't YOU interested in finding the truth; whatever it is? If NOT, time to hang up the pen and go back to school (in an ~entirely different~ field.)
I'm sick and tired of the whole Katrinagate runaround. If it weren't for the heartbreak of the animals still out there, I would have left these forums a long time ago and moved on. But how anyone can turn their back on the misery of even one still lost/frightened/starving/sick/injured pet and untold homeless strays and even poor unwanted/unloved feral cats is beyond my understanding of human compassion.
Some reporter out there needs to stand up and speak for these animals. CHRIS ROSE are you out there (1 Dead in Attic Times-Picayune 11/15/05).
Hi Eric! You probably know about this, and may even be in it, but I wanted to make sure you saw this--its Sunday nite on PBS at 8pm. When you see it, take special notice of the elderly gentleman Bill Hicks and his rescue of Concat. You played a major role in this--you are the one who rescued Coco from the aparment/boarding house on Constance St in NOLA for me and gave her to Lila. When I drove to Baton Rouge to get Coco I took Bill Hicks with me--the NG heard about my search, and agreed to get Bill into NO to get Concat. And the rest is history, as they say!! So thanks once again for you help, and all your dedicated work for the pets there. And enjoy the special! Tanya Sisk (Coco's Angels)
Phone call from Sheriff Montgomery to Eric Rice: Voice Message Left On Erics Phone on Nov 18th.
"This is Sheriff John Montgomery in Mt Home Arkansas. You had called and left me a message back a couple weeks ago concerning the Edna Dog situation down here. The reason I’m calling is to give you a short heads up of where we’re at and what’s going on. I’m actually out of state right now and won’t be back until Monday, but we have been able to place about 125 dogs. That leaves about 350 left. The Humane Society of the U.S. is in charge right now and have been on the scene for about 3 weeks. The problem is the order that was given by the judge 3 weeks ago said that the Hanson’s, Tammy and William Hanson had to approve of any placement of the dogs. They have now put their heels up and said no more. So we are at a standstill so we got an emergency hearing in front of the judge this coming Monday at 11:00 a.m. It, this is at a crucial junction because the Humane Society of the U.S. has basically told us that sometime in the 1st part of December they’re going to have to pull out so we’re going to have to present evidence to the judge and hopefully we’ll get the judge to rule that we’ll be able to place the rest of the animals.
The Humane Society of the U.S. has assured us that they already have shelters lined up all over the country and even in Canada to take these animals. They’re just waiting on the Hanson’s to agree, which they have refused. So I’m really just giving you a head’s up, um, not that I don’t think there’s anything you may or may not be able to do. But it’d sure be nice if people knew what was going on. Um, the conditions, of course, in our area is starting to get cold and all though the animals are being taken care of I know they’ve placed numerous animals with vets (veterinarians) in our area to get them cared for. But we still have about 350 that we need to find homes or shelters for so it’s even to the point that we have animals that are local owned by local people that we’ve been able to prove is theirs but the Hanson’s refuse to even let them go back to owners. It’s quite a mess and we hope to get relief on Monday from the judge here. It is at 11:00 a.m. in District Court in Mountain Home Arkansas with the Judge Van Geerhart is presiding.
S`o anyway, I’m just giving you a heads up and appreciate – I do want to tell you I appreciate the apology that you did give me as far as jumping the gun. Out of all the groups out there that did that, you’re the only one that’s bothered to apologize. So I appreciate that. It means a lot. Thank You."
As far as I am concerned, the so-called survey is a bad joke. First of all, how are a mere 4 areas of the city even remotely representative of the numbers of destitute animals? The areas selected for this survey are but a drop in the bucket for a city the size of New Orleans and could never result in an accurate head count.
The times of day picked to conduct the survey is another joke. Animals that are traumatized, shell shocked, starving and terrified don't come out of hiding at specific times of day for the benefit of surveyors trying to count them. The majority of cats and dogs wait until long after dark in the middle of the night when humans are not around so they can do their scavenging. They are in a survival mode. It would be nice if the animals would all show up at Noon every day and form a parade so the surveyors could get a head count that is more believable than what they have come up with so far....but it ain't gonna happen that way. And, it sure isn't going to happen the way they have already conducted the survey. Even the numbers of head-counters selected for this survey is preposterous for an evaluation. Two members to a team? Give me a break!
What puzzles me is why Laura Maloney of the LASPCA is so gung-ho to make it appear everything is relatively back to normal for the stray animals. What is the motive behind this facade? What does she have to gain by trying to make the problem not look as serious as it actually is? And, more importantly, how does her attitude affect the rescue of animals that are suffering? Why doesn't she throw up a prayer of gratitude that unpaid volunteers are willing to give of their time to help these animals instead of denigrating them the way she does. Her attitude certainly paints a callous and uncaring attitude on her part. The Board of Directors of the SPCA needs to take a long hard look of how her comments and actions reflect on their organization.
As for reporter Bruce Eggler's articles, it's pretty obvious he just writes what Maloney tells him to write. But I am surprised that the Times~Picayune allows him to write such articles without investigation.
NO-KILL SHELTER IN WARSAW, MO NEEDS YOUR HELP TO CONTINUE!! This shelter subsists entirely on donations; there are no monies forthcoming from any state or local entity. It wasn't too long ago that it became a no-kill shelter, but this is a very small town, and funds and supplies are extremely limited. So is space. Daily they have to turn animals away because they are full. We have some Katrina dogs here, too. The lady that runs the shelter hasn't become callous or hard-hearted. Each time I visit I'm impressed at how clean all the cages are and how well-cared for the animals are. This is done with only one full-time and two part-time staff. One of the Katrina dogs was almost at death's door and wouldn't eat. Sonja, the lady that runs the shelter, cooked eggs for him every day. The most recent meal I heard about included cooked salmon!! You can tell, as you watch her with the animals, that hers is a labor of love. As everyone has said, I know people are "donated out," but please help them help their sweet little charges. You can send checks or supplies to: Rolf Nelson Animal Shelter, 1215 Medic Drive, Warsaw, Mo. They also have a PayPal account. Go to this site: http://www.petfinder.org/shelters/MO113.html and click on "Make a Donation." If you're searching for the perfect cat or dog, you might also search their site. It breaks my heart to see all the adorable cats and dogs whose eyes plead "Choose me!"
YOU CAN ALSO HELP BY ASSISTING WITH VET FEES FOR THE KATRINA ANIMALS HERE. Dr. Don Anstaett, of the Warsaw Veterinary Clinic here has been treating the Katrina animals without concern about how he would be paid for his services. Since the shelter is woefully short of funds, this adds to their burden as well. You may make donations on behalf of Katrina animals by sending a check to: Warsaw Veterinary Clinic, P. O. Box 245, Warsaw, MO 65355. They also accept credit cards; the office number is 660-438-7333. In either case, please specify that it is for the Katrina animals. Thanks you, and bless you!!!
More than 250,000 animals were left stranded, according to PBS.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/katrina/
Check out PBS website -- they are broadcasting show Sun Nov 20 -- "Nature" will feature Katrina rescues. Show was taped over a month ago, but the show's website has recent follow-up.
This website is not just promoting the TV program. It also has additional info about the rescues. Web site is worth reading. PBS Nature Katrina website will remain online, even after show is broadcast.
Website also has biography of Jane Garrison (click on "meet the rescuers"), and the bio says Jane still rescuing and volunteers still needed and links to website for Animal Rescue New Orleans.
http://www.animalrescueneworleans.com/
Note that PBS website says "More than 250,000 pets -- from cats and dogs to parrots and fish -- were left stranded by the storm's destruction."
" He sounds like Maloney's parrot, instead of a professional journalist. "
Maloney said in an email to me (when she forwarded the press release) that she was not happy with that article because it sounded like it was pitting the ARNO/ACA rescuers against LA-SPCA.
That's what she said.
I've given up trying to figure out what's really going on. The spin and lies has muddied the waters. I can't see the truth anymore.
Shelters are bursting at the seams. Where are all these newly-rescued animals going to go?
We need more housing for the animals! Please contact the Humane Society of the United States, and ask them to do something. With all the money they've collected, they should be able to convert warehouses into climate-controlled temporary shelters that will comfortably house animals. They can hire local people who need jobs to care for the animals -- I'm sure any pet owner from that region would be willing to be paid to do simple things like feed, water, walk, and clean for docile animals. That would give the experts more time to resocialize and care for animals with problems.
Please contact them:
Email: disaster@hsus.org
Address: Wayne Pacelle, Chief Executive Officer, Humane Society of the United States, 2100 L Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037
Phone:1-800-HUMANE-1 (10 a.m. – 6 p.m. EST)
Tonight on PBS Nature:
"Katrina's Animal Rescues"
5:00 pm PT
6:00 pm MT
7:00 pm CT
8:00 pm ET
No idea how it spins, but it should be interesting, and it will certainly draw attention!
Nationwide Whitehouse Action Alert for Animals in NO-Tues 11/22
THIS HAS BEEN MADE EASY. PLEASE HELP KATRINA'S FORGOTTEN! Please sign the petition, email, fax or call on 11/22. Permission to cross post widely. Thank you. If you know anyone direct or have contactwith media, please email asap. Send this everywhere!
Phone Numbers
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
TTY/TDD
Comments: 202-456-6213
Visitors Office: 202-456-2121
E-Mail Please send your comments to comments@whitehouse.gov.
Vice President Richard Cheney: vice_president@whitehouse.gov
Sample letter and talking points follow below.
Sample letter and petition-
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
Phone: (202) 456-1414
Fax: (202) 456-2461
E-mail: president@whitehouse.gov
Dear President Bush:
Traumatized by Hurricane Katrina, massive flooding, and months of existing without human care, they wander the streets by the thousands. Fighting illness and injury, they escaped their homes when doors and windows blew open. Lost, confused and terrified, every waking moment is spent desperately searching for enough food and water to survive one more day. Untold numbers of them are dying often right beside the food and water bowls left by a handful of remaining rescuers who could not refill them in time.
I am reminding you of Katrina’s Forgotten, the companion animals left behind when evacuees were forced to leave without them. For a short time, they were the focus of intense national attention. Volunteers and large animal protection groups mobilized to rescue them and massive shelters were set up for their care. Three months have passed. Only a handful of committed volunteers continue to rescue.
Louisiana has announced it has moved from rescue to recovery and outside help with animal rescue is no longer needed or welcome. Even though there are areas with no active animal control agencies, functioning animal shelters or needed resources, the state of Louisiana claims the animal rescue operation is over and local authorities can handle the problem. As a result, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, acting on the advice of Assistant State Veterinarian Martha Littlefield, has refused to extend the executive order giving out-of-state veterinarians the right to practice in Louisiana. The order expired October 25, 2005. Rescuers are being threatened with arrest if they attempt to feed animals in Orleans Parish. Out-of-state veterinarians willing to volunteer their services to help are being told that to do so could mean jail time and thousands of dollars in fines.
The animal crisis remains and as bad as the situation is now, in six months it will be even worse. Despite horrific conditions, the animals are still breeding. Only a small percentage of pets have been spayed or neutered, and rescuers are reporting frequent sightings of new puppies and kittens. Animal advocacy groups would like to help and have plans for an immediate, large-scale spay and neuter program for the pets of Louisiana. Necessary to this effort are dozens of veterinarians experienced with high-volume surgery and many out-of-state veterinarians have agreed to help, free of charge. Additionally, the advocacy groups have not found any in-state veterinarians able to participate in high-volume spay/neuter program.
We have a moral and ethical responsibility to feed, treat and find homes for the thousands of pets struggling to survive. We are requesting that you intervene and extend the executive order giving out-of-state veterinarians the right to practice in Louisiana. Families who have lost everything are counting on your help to reunite them with Katrina’s Forgotten.
For the families and pets who lost each other, we thank you,
Please include this petition in any/all written correspondence~~~not
only as an opportunity for more signatures, but mainly so they will see just how many people really DO care!
"Why is Compassion Illegal in Louisiana?" petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/740552969
General "Talking Points"
General "talking points" for calls or letters to the Whitehouse:
I'm calling (or writing) today regarding the current ban on animal
rescue in Louisiana, ordered by Governor Kathleen Blanco upon the
advice of Assistant State Veterinarian, Dr. Martha Littlefield. Dr.
Littlefield has no rescue "field" experience nor has she visited any of the Parish's disaster zones to witness first-hand, the need to extend the executive order that will allow out of state vets and professionals to practice within the state of Louisiana. Governor Blanco is being ill-advised into beliving her state can handle the remaining thousands of animals left on the streets, hiding, fearful and dying by the hour of dehydration and starvation. The essence of this problem began when Governor Blanco imposed a ban on people taking their pets with them during their own rescue which included service animals for the blind, deaf, and handicapped! Denying a service dog entry under any circumstances even in an emergency is illegal in most states. Most states in this country have animals from Katrina, and we are all trying to reunite them with their owners or adopt them out to good homes.
There are still MANY rescuers, volunteers, veterinarians and other
animal professionals who WANT to help Louisiana animals survive, but
are at risk of going to jail under this ban. The animal health care
professionals are willing to volunteer spay/neuter programs which are so desperately needed. This too, has been denied under political "red tape". Louisiana vets have told Commissioner Bob Odom that they can handle the situation now that it has diminished. This is simply not the case. Louisiana simply does not have enough of their "own" people or resources to care for the thousands of animals that remain or they would have done so already!
The lives of thousands of animals who were required to be left behind by uncaring officials remain in jeopardy. In the majority of cases, these animals that escaped their homes when doors or windows flew open with high winds or floods are someone's pet and most likely represent the ONLY thing these people have left from this catostrophic event that changed their lives forever.
The world is now watching Louisiana and it's officials once again. Will the humane and caring choice be made or will a cruel one devastate even more lives?
ALERT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS-
PLEASE also CC your letters (if in USA) to your reps and senators and CALL them if you can. There are 800# in D.C.
Find here:
www.house.gov
www.senate.gov
AND every white house contact you can find:
president@whitehouse.gov
Firstlady@whitehouse.gov
Tip - put CC list on the bottom of your letters so they cannot be swept under the rug.
Nationwide Whitehouse Action Alert for Animals in NO-Tues 11/22
THIS HAS BEEN MADE EASY. PLEASE HELP KATRINA'S FORGOTTEN! Please sign the petition, email, fax or call on 11/22. Permission to cross post widely. Thank you.If you know anyone direct or have contact with media, please email asap. Send this everywhere!
Phone Numbers
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
TTY/TDD
Comments: 202-456-6213
Visitors Office: 202-456-2121
E-Mail Please send your comments to comments@whitehouse.gov.
Vice President Richard Cheney: vice_president@whitehouse.gov
Sample letter and talking points follow below.
Sample letter and petition-
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
Phone: (202) 456-1414
Fax: (202) 456-2461
E-mail: president@whitehouse.gov
Dear President Bush:
Traumatized by Hurricane Katrina, massive flooding, and months of existing without human care, they wander the streets by the thousands. Fighting illness and injury, they escaped their homes when doors and windows blew open. Lost, confused and terrified, every waking moment is spent desperately searching for enough food and water to survive one more day. Untold numbers of them are dying often right beside the food and water bowls left by a handful of remaining rescuers who could not refill them in time.
I am reminding you of Katrina’s Forgotten, the companion animals left behind when evacuees were forced to leave without them. For a short time, they were the focus of intense national attention. Volunteers and large animal protection groups mobilized to rescue them and massive shelters were set up for their care. Three months have passed. Only a handful of committed volunteers continue to rescue.
Louisiana has announced it has moved from rescue to recovery and outside help with animal rescue is no longer needed or welcome. Even though there are areas with no active animal control agencies, functioning animal shelters or needed resources, the state of Louisiana claims the animal rescue operation is over and local authorities can handle the problem. As a result, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, acting on the advice of Assistant State Veterinarian Martha Littlefield, has refused to extend the executive order giving out-of-state veterinarians the right to practice in Louisiana. The order expired October 25, 2005. Rescuers are being threatened with arrest if they attempt to feed animals in Orleans Parish. Out-of-state veterinarians willing to volunteer their services to help are being told that to do so could mean jail time and thousands of dollars in fines.
The animal crisis remains and as bad as the situation is now, in six months it will be even worse. Despite horrific conditions, the animals are still breeding. Only a small percentage of pets have been spayed or neutered, and rescuers are reporting frequent sightings of new puppies and kittens. Animal advocacy groups would like to help and have plans for an immediate, large-scale spay and neuter program for the pets of Louisiana. Necessary to this effort are dozens of veterinarians experienced with high-volume surgery and many out-of-state veterinarians have agreed to help, free of charge. Additionally, the advocacy groups have not found any in-state veterinarians able to participate in high-volume spay/neuter program.
We have a moral and ethical responsibility to feed, treat and find homes for the thousands of pets struggling to survive. We are requesting that you intervene and extend the executive order giving out-of-state veterinarians the right to practice in Louisiana. Families who have lost everything are counting on your help to reunite them with Katrina’s Forgotten.
For the families and pets who lost each other, we thank you,
Please include this petition in any/all written correspondence~~~not
only as an opportunity for more signatures, but mainly so they will see just how many people really DO care!
"Why is Compassion Illegal in Louisiana?" petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/740552969
General "Talking Points"
General "talking points" for calls or letters to the Whitehouse:
I'm calling (or writing) today regarding the current ban on animal
rescue in Louisiana, ordered by Governor Kathleen Blanco upon the
advice of Assistant State Veterinarian, Dr. Martha Littlefield. Dr.
Littlefield has no rescue "field" experience nor has she visited any of the Parish's disaster zones to witness first-hand, the need to extend the executive order that will allow out of state vets and professionals to practice within the state of Louisiana. Governor Blanco is being ill-advised into beliving her state can handle the remaining thousands of animals left on the streets, hiding, fearful and dying by the hour of dehydration and starvation. The essence of this problem began when Governor Blanco imposed a ban on people taking their pets with them during their own rescue which included service animals for the blind, deaf, and handicapped! Denying a service dog entry under any circumstances even in an emergency is illegal in most states. Most states in this country have animals from Katrina, and we are all trying to reunite them with their owners or adopt them out to good homes.
There are still MANY rescuers, volunteers, veterinarians and other
animal professionals who WANT to help Louisiana animals survive, but
are at risk of going to jail under this ban. The animal health care
professionals are willing to volunteer spay/neuter programs which are so desperately needed. This too, has been denied under political "red tape". Louisiana vets have told Commissioner Bob Odom that they can handle the situation now that it has diminished. This is simply not the case. Louisiana simply does not have enough of their "own" people or resources to care for the thousands of animals that remain or they would have done so already!
The lives of thousands of animals who were required to be left behind by uncaring officials remain in jeopardy. In the majority of cases, these animals that escaped their homes when doors or windows flew open with high winds or floods are someone's pet and most likely represent the ONLY thing these people have left from this catostrophic event that changed their lives forever.
The world is now watching Louisiana and it's officials once again. Will the humane and caring choice be made or will a cruel one devastate even more lives?
ALERT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS-
PLEASE also CC your letters (if in USA) to your reps and senators and CALL them if you can. There are 800# in D.C.
Find here:
www.house.gov
www.senate.gov
AND every white house contact you can find:
president@whitehouse.gov
Firstlady@whitehouse.gov
Tip - put CC list on the bottom of your letters so they cannot be swept under the rug.
After watching the Nature special on NBC about Katrina's Animal Rescues, I am sure that people are left with the idea that the rescues are OVER. I will be writing to the station and to the producers to try and get the truth across to them. I am sure that Jane attempted to do so, and is shocked at the ending of the show.
Just another bunch to write, to pass the truth along. They did not mention one other rescue group that I heard, only the LASPCA, but it did give Jane and Drew quite a bit of coverage, AND they did have something at the bottom about helping. Probably just about sending more money. Sigh.
God bless everyone who is still working so hard to help. I only wish that I could be helping in person, rather than just sending money. Eric, you are an angel, thank you so much for all you are doing.
RE: PBS Nature Katrina show. Note that their website updates the program, tells what has been happening since show aired.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/katrina
Has bios of the rescuers. Click on meet the rescuers, then Jane Garrison. Jane's page says she is still rescuing and links to AnimalRescueNewOrleans.com
HERE IS THE REALITY. YOU COULD FIND 100 PLACES LIKE THIS. THAT IS WHY THE LASPCA IS OFF ITS ROCKER TO INSINUATE THAT THEY CAN TAKE CARE OF ALL OF THIS. JANE AND ALLEY CAT ALLIES SPENT AN ENTIRE DAY JUST CLEARING CATS OUT OF 1 TRAILERPARK, THEY WOULD NEED TO SPEND A DAY OR TWO AT THIS LOCATION AS WELL. AND IT IS ONE OF 1000.
Hi,
>Here is the e-mail I was going to send you earlier with some info:
>
>A few of us have been caring for some wonderful cats for about 8 years, up
>by Brunings Restaurant (on the Orleans Parish side on the lake near the
>footbridge that crosses the canal to Jefferson Parish near Sid Mars). We
>need some
>animal rescue group to PLEASE rescue the surviving cats that are hiding in
>Murray Yacht Sales and that area. I have contacted Ally Cat Allies, and
>Animal
>Rescue of New Orleans and even SPCA, but I want to be sure the cats get
>good
>homes or can go to a cat sanctuary in Mississippi where they can be cared
>for.
>
>We feed them but know nothing about trapping or catching. We don't do
>that.
>The cats are friendly, most have been spayed, they are healthy and fat.
>There were about 40 before the storm including kittens, and only 13 after
>the
>storm survived. We have recently only seen 5! I have names for most of
>them
>and have known the group for a long time. They are all related to each
>other.
>There were packs of dogs up there chasing the cats so maybe that's why
>they
>have disappeared! It is so sad. I don't think the the cat rescue groups
>have
>had a chance to go try to catch the cats and get them adopted or taken to
>Tylertown, MS to some cat sanctuary where they can live safely (St.
>Francis
>Animal Sanctuary?). They are too busy catching other cats and dogs.
>
>Also, there has been bulldozing up by Brunings, Coconut Beach, and Sintes
>Boats, Murrays Yacht Sales, and the beauty salon there. I am worried about
>the
>cats, because they have no life up there now and no future. It is sad
>enough
>that 30 drowned or were killed violently in the storm, and these survivors
>must be rescued. They are sweet cats once they are familiar with someone.
>
>If you know anyone who can rescue them and help, I have more details if you
>need them. Time might be running out since they will probably be
>bulldozing
>the rest of the broken structures up there where the cats stay. We see
>the
>cats daily, but lately we only see 2 or 3...they could be hiding or
>scattered.
>Browns, oranges, black, gray cats.
>I am at (504) 831-0856, you can call me.
>Thanks.
>Daphne
Thanx for sharing Mt Home shrieefs message Eric. It sounds as if he really cares....hope the judge sees fit to release the remaining dogs to HSUS so they can be homed.
I've read news articles dated between Nov 18 and today, Nov 21, wherein Ms. Maloney, head of the LA-SPCA was quoted as saying that her group does not need the help of out-of-state volunteer groups to facilitate the rescue of the remaining animals in N.O.
I truly question the LA-SPCA "official" statement particularly apropos the statistics which showed that pre-Katrina, N.O. had a high stray population and a very high non-neutered/non-spayed percentage of not only strays, but also pets, as well as a very high rate of disease among its four legged residents, particularly heartworm and parasites. These statistics evidence that pre-Katrina, the animal control and animal "humane" efforts present in N.O., were inadequate to address the animal community's needs.
Apropos La-SPCA's press releases regarding how Katrina devstated its structure, both internally and externally, financially and otherwise, is it not disengenuous, at best, and, at worst, dishonest, for the LA-SPCA claim to be in control of its animal community's needs post-Katrina?
I suppose if one were to manipulate what the needs of the N.O. animal community are to fit the abilities of the organization in charge, then it appears the statement can be made to appear to be accurate and true.
I suppose if the city of N.O. maintain low standards of what the minimal level of care for its animal community is, then everything is copasetic--a maintenance of the status quo, albeit, a dismally low standard of care and concern.
But, who are we to impose on N.O. a higher standard? We are citizens of the U.S., residents of teh U.S., residents of the animal kingdom at large. N.O., while successful in its ability to disengage itself even from governance by the state of Louisiana, represents an attitude that it is a community unto itself, answerable to no one and no entity outside of itself.
Myopic and incestuous are the terms that comes to mind when trying to "explain" the mentality of N.O.
However, in this global economy, such belly-button examining perspectives no longer are acceptable. This particularly is apt to N.O. now given that its hands are stretched all the way to D.C. into the coffers of our tax dollars. Just as charity groups which "help" the homeless, the insane, and others, require certain conduct on the parts of the recipients of their "charity," and just as countries in receipt of U.S. aid are rquired to maintain minimal standards of humanity in order to receive aide, so, too, must N.O.
This is the first time N.O. will be forced to stand answerable to powers outside of itself. N.O. is unaccustomed to such oversight. N.O. is unaccustomed to being held to task to provide for itself and to take care of itself. It has for centuries remained unto itself, practically completely unanswerable even to the governance of the State of Louisiana.
If N.O. expects aide from the U.S. and the world, it must be held to strict standards of conduct. That will be a first for N.O. But, Katrina showed with a magnified perspective the ineptitude of its old ways of being and governing.
No one is "out to get" N.O. N.O. simply must be held accountable for its old ways and required to revise and to raise its level of conduct to an acceptable level if it is to be the recipient of the billions of dollars in aide it believes it is entitled to.
When one reads the editorials in the Times-Picayune and listens to the comments of the residents and powers that be in N.O., one thing rings loud and clear---they expect and demand the billions. In turn, we expect and demand accountability. No more should we blindly place aide dollars in N.O.'s hands without such requisites. Let us not forget that the year Nagin came into office, he received $18million in aide from the federal government for the SOLE purpose of designing and implementing an evacuation plan in the event of a Cat IV---where on earth did that $18 M go? Let us not forget that the federal government provided $$$ (I don't know the figure) to build the levee systems---as reports show, it dismisally was designed and/or built. But, the $$$ still disappeared. Where is it? Perhaps the fact that numerous previous city officials either stand charged with crimes in office or are under investigation or already have been convicted speaks the answer.
In all events, N.O. can no longer be allowed to conduct itself as if it were an entity unto itself answerable to no one, because it is answerable, to us, to its residents, to its government, to the world, and most importantly, to the animal kingdom.
Noah's Wish Update
by Balyn, 11/21/05 9:24 ET
Directors Update: November 20, 2005 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time
There have been rumors circulating on the internet recently that pertain to Noah's Wish which I would like to correct. I apologize for not doing this sooner but we have been extremely busy trying to shut down our operation in Slidell. Also, I would have hoped that people would trust us enough to do our job the right way and not get pulled into the rumor frenzy. In all honesty, taking time to put these rumors to an end definitely distracts from what needs to be done right now for the few remaining animals in our care.
Noah's Wish will be completely closing down our shelter on November 21 which we have had open in Slidell, Louisiana for 84 days. Originally, we thought we would be done by the 15th of November, but we postponed our departure when we realized there was still more work to be done. When we leave, everyone of the 1,986 animals we have cared for will either be reunited with their families, placed in a foster home, adopted, or they will be waiting for an individual or small rescue group to pick them up. We are not turning animals over to Slidell Animal Control for them to be euthanized which is the rumor being circulated on the internet. The rumor that we are doing this is absolutely incorrect. There will be a small number of animals that do stay at the animal control shelter for a few days after we leave as they cannot be picked up before we depart. We will follow through with animal control to make sure this happens. If any of the plans fall through we will come up with another solution.
I must say it is an insult to the organization for people to think we would give up on these animals at this point. It makes me sad at how quickly people jumped to misjudge us when our history in past disasters proves we have always been committed to the animals that we take responsibility for during disasters, no matter how long it takes to get them all where they belong and where they will be well cared for. For those who have sent e-mails saying they will no longer support Noah's Wish, I can only say that we want people to support our work who truly trust us and believe in our commitment to the animals. And, there are hundreds of thousands of people who do and the numbers are continuing to grow rapidly. All of us on site in Slidell have put in incredibly long hours for the past 2 and a half months taking care of all the needs of the animals that have come through our shelter. We have nursed animals back to health, bathed them when they were covered in oil, held them in our arms when they were scared, gave them blankets to curl up with at night when the weather got colder, and played with them to help them feel they mattered to us. The love and attention that has been shown for these animals is a testament to the compassion everyone on the Noah's Wish team, including Slidell Animal Control, feels towards these animals and also their caregivers. Noah's Wish has invested a great deal in the animals we have been responsible for during this disaster and we will continue to do this, not only during this disaster, but in future ones too.
I want to also come to the defense of Slidell Animal Control. For people to automatically think that turning animals over to this agency means they will die is wrong and unfair. Out of all the agencies and organizations that Noah's Wish has worked with during past disasters they have been by far the best. The level of commitment to the animals, and the obvious concern and compassion that the staff has shown throughout this entire ordeal, is to be commended. They too have invested a great deal in these animals, working right along side of us the entire time. There is no way they could give up on these animals either.
Noah's Wish will be posting a full report on our website once our work in Slidell is complete.
http://www.noahswish.org/Hurricane%20Katrina.htm
katrina forgotten all around --
It is worse than you can imagine!
by riverparish, 11/21/05 11:27 ET
The media has forgotten and it is 'out of sight, out of mind'. Thousands of homes, businesses, schools, churches, in Louisiana and Mississippi are totally destroyed. It wasn't just New Orleans. Help from the fed. gov't is hit and miss. State gov't is doing everything to get help to these people but the affected states are in unknown territory of a disaster of this size. They are trying to assess, recover, provide relief and also try to keep the state running. If it wasn't for private volunteers and donations from the private and charities that have fed and sheltered and clothed victims...it is so unbelieveably sad that most of these people are hard working, tax paying, good people and have lost their homes, their jobs and are still in shock of the scope of this disaster and now have mortgage companies and bill collectors hunting them down to pay for furniture, cars and items that are long gone. The ones with insurance are having trouble getting the payments. It is a tangled, papertrail, bureaucratic mess.
The following is a news report aired by WAFB, Channel 9 in Baton Rouge on 11/17/05. Take note of comments made by Dr. Maxwell Lea, Jr., LA State Veterinarian, in reference to his opinion that animal rescue groups should leave the state and turn everything over to the various parishes. As a Louisiana resident who pays taxes that furnishes this official's salary, I sincerely apologize for his comments and actions. I also apologize for the comments and non-actions of Governor Blanco, Asst. State Vet, Dr. Martha Littlefield, and N.O. Mayor Ray Nagin for their ineptitude and lack of common sense regarding the animal victims. I don't help pay Laura Maloney, Director of LASPCA, but I also apologize for her since she is right up there with the rest of them. LA and N.O. want to rebuild but they can't do it without tourism. Yet, each and every one of the above officials has gone out of their way to insult and malign the animal rescuers who have come from out of town to save our animals. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what a stupid attitude this is on their parts. Those of us with brains greatly appreciate every effort the animal rescuers have put into this tragedy and support you wholeheartedly. The news report follows below:
"Animal Rescuers Say State is Hampering Their Efforts
Animal rescue groups say the state is hampering their efforts to save lives. Groups such as "Alley Cat Allies" and "Animal Rescue New Orleans" are complaining that an executive order by Governor Blanco was allowed to expire and that is killing animals in New Orleans.
In the New Orleans area, animal rescue groups are still in the process of collecting stray animals. They claim they are being hampered because they cannot use free out-of-state veterinarians. The state, meanwhile, says there is plenty of available vets right here in Louisiana to take care of the problem.
A cat population that is exploding two months after Katrina is one reason out-of-state animal rescuers say they are still there trying to help. But they say since the state did not extend a provision allowing out-of-state vets to practice in Louisiana, the animals are suffering.
"There are people who are veterinarians who are willing to come here for free and offer their services for the people of New Orleans," says Jane Garrison, Animal Rescue New Orleans. "It's just a tragedy that the state is not allowing it to happen."
Not so, says Louisiana's official state veterinarian, Dr. Maxwell Lea. Lea says animal control has been turned back over to local parishes and there are enough Louisiana vets to handle the population.
"Every bit of information we get indicates that there is adequate veterinarian care available in the New Orleans area," he says.
But rescue groups say they have gotten little help from the state in their efforts to save cats and other animals. Because of this, they believe more animals will die.
"We may have to leave the state as a result because we can't operate a shelter without a veterinarian," says Clare Davis, Alley Cat Allies. "Can't take animals off the street, we can't rescue without a veterinarian, so absolutely it's going to cost animal lives."
Leaving the state is not a bad idea according to Dr. Lea. He says it's time for the animal rescuers to pack up their traps and go home. "They need to begin winding things down and handing over more and more to the animal control in the various parishes."
The animal rescuers were clearing out a trailer park in Kenner when we caught up with them. They pulled out about 25 cats and one rabbit. They have sent out many many e-mails about their plight, but after hearing from Dr. Lea, they very well may leave.
Reporter: Jim Shannon"
What will out-of-state rescuers -- fellow citizens -- do when the state of Louisiana tells them to leave? Right now, there is no legal action is being taken (except against out-of-state vets). But eventually ARCO, DRAR, and ACA will be made unwelcome in the strongest possible terms.
There is not much we can do in this case, when a state acts against its best interest. I don't know if the federal government has any jurisdiction in this matter. And even if they did, I don't expect the Bush administration to gives a rat's ass about it; they're too busy wrecking the rest of the country.
The only way to fix this and other problems in the long term is for citizens to start reclaiming their government. We need to start getting more active in all levels of government, and throw the big corporation puppets out of office.
Littlefield and Friends Ignore State Animal Welfare Problems
Hay/feed help please
by imisnya, 11/21/05 17:00 ET
Can an experienced local person please please tell me where to get some processed/shredded alfalfa bales? I will buy right now for south Vermilion Parish but just don't know where. I am from out of state and a city girl. I don't even know what feed is. All I know is that they are out of hay and need them BAD! They have been needing them bad.
This lady, Joelle, has been trying to help EVERYONE in her area and she is stretched thin. She's trying to help others and no one is helping her. Not Red Cross, not salvation army, not FEMA. Littlefield gave her the same run around like she did with the other animal rescue groups. She's trying to feed a ton of strays also hoping the owners would return.
Just please refer me to a local place close to get processed/shredded alfalfa to south vermilion parish that gets more bang for the buck! Thanks.
I am grief stricken for all of those beautiful souls that are alone, lost, misplaced, etc. out there. I lost my babies to Hurricane Katrina. I had a male Ole English Bull, and a female Old English Bull – neither could swim of course, we were flooded out and now live in a “shell of a house” that we are trying to rebuild. I am in my mid 50’s and those babies were to me “my babies” even my children and grandchildren (sad to say) knew I cared more for my babies than for them. “What a horrible grandmother!” but …. Anyway, I have no resources, money, or housing at present, but I would like to help in any way that I can. All my family members and relatives have either lost their homes, or are like myself – in a bad way, but, I adore dogs….I am formerly a New Orleanean, and want so badly to help.
Please keep me informed and posted.
God loves his little creatures and they make this world so much better, we have to protect them.
God Bless people like you for standing up for them!
Kaye Karl
MSS Project Support to
NASA Engineering & Safety Center
Stennis Space Center, MS 39529
228-688-1672
org. name:
Vermillion Animal Aid
5937 Veterans Memorial Dr.
Abbeville, LA 70510
(they are 501.c.3)
(The people/environment of south Vermillion Parish)
They have not seen Salvation Army. Red Cross came once, but said they were very busy and have not been seen since. Fema was seen, but she said FEMA doesn't know what they are doing and were running around in circles getting nothing done. Some of the people have not seen anyone but this lady since the hurricanes. Many are trying to live in tents and campers. They had well water, but salt water and oily sludge have overflowed the wells and made the water unfit. Joelle is trying to take them some bottled water that she gets in for donations, and they are driving to Abbeville to haul water themselves. A few are living in their house trailers with electricity, but the govt. is turning off their electricity because they are unable to raise their trailer to the required height in case of another storm. This is not causing the people to leave, instead they are living without elec.
Joelle received a load of blankets, clorox, water and towels for the animals from Indianapolis Humane Society, but the people do not have any means of staying warm, etc....so most blankets and towels have gone to the human victims. She is working out of an 18 wheeler trailer that she is renting and they come up and ask for these things. She is also giving Clorox when she has it and whatever else she has on hand. Some of the people have seen no support at all since the storms. A congressional group supposedly flew over the area 3 weeks ago, but didn't bring a film crew with them. The people haven't heard anything from them, since. Everything south of Hwy. 82 is gone, all the way to the Gulf and Vermillion Bay. This includes numerous small towns, farms and islands where people and animals live. What Katrina missed, Rita damaged. Joelle and her husband have taken in one woman who had no place to go and no way to get there.
(The livestock)
There were over 10,000 head of cattle in the parish when the hurricanes hit. She is not sure how many are left, but in the thousands. Some have been sold and some have died, but hay is still the biggest need she has. The small family farms are trying not to sell their cattle and other livestock, and are trying to hold on to them because this is all they know. Many livestock are also injured. People are approaching Joelle pleading for feed for pigs, chickens goats and horses. She has none of this food, but has told some to go to the feed store and charge a bag of feed on her acct. and she will worry about how to pay for it later. Livestock has been caught in barbwire fences, and now has infections and need simple medicine. Even alcohol is non existant. Most livestock have hoof rot from standing in the water so long. Pecan Island cattle are in the marshes and afraid to come out so the people leave food on the roadway when they have it. HSUS of the US donated 17 tons of cattle feed right after the hurricanes and it was gone in 2 hours. She hasn't seen or heard from them anymore. She did get one load of hay that was 2 or 3 years old, and it was falling apart, but the people were thrilled to get it. They had some hay put up for their livestock but it was ruined by the storms. The land is unfit to replant. Everything is either covered with goop or salt. There has been no rain to dilute the salt and toxic soil, so they can't plant rye grass. Bermuda grass will grow in more salty conditions, but it can't be planted until spring because it doesn't grow in winter. The county extension office closed permanently last week. She was responsible for getting the county agent approx. 70% of his donations but they stopped coming in, The extension office was so flustered, that they just closed it up and went to other jobs. Most of them either have destroyed or damaged homes. The govt. started out helping ranchers who had over 60 head of cattle, but even that has ended. Those small ranchers with under 60 head have not seen any govt. assistance for their animals. One man has over 400 head on 50 acres.There are 4 vets in the area. None of them have offered any kind of discounts on fees and the people can't afford to pay for the vet services. State vet Martha Littlefield has spoken to Joelle and doesn't seem to think these animals are in need. When the 17 tons of feed was gone in 2 hours, Joelle spoke to Martha and told her that they needed more help. Martha said there were 49 tons in the county extension barn. Joelle was standing in the barn when she was speaking to Martha and it was empty. Martha has not been around since then. It has been estimated that just the fence posts and fencing that has been destroyed will cost in excess of $1,000,000.00.
Joelle is feeding over 35 cats and as many dogs on Pecan Island. She did receive 1 load of cat and dog food from of all places, an agricultural high school in Mass. She is now almost out of dry pet food. She has no doghouses and no kennels. There is no one else feeding in the area south of her, except the people who she gives food to. Dogs and cats are everywhere, and most are injured, starving and covered in some kind of oily substance. Many are ill from drinking polluted water. Many people are still walking around in shock. Joelle is trying to foster out some of the animals she is taking in, but is mostly trying to feed and water animals in place. She still believes some owners will return and take their animals back, so she is holding animals without adopting out. She has 12 dogs in her home.
(Miscellaneous)
There is one feed store that she trusts. The name is Tivedos or Tibedos. I couldn't really understand which one. It is on State St. in Abbeville and she has an acct. there. She says it would be great for small donations to be called in there.
She was in touch with Farm Aide who was helping large ranchers some, but they started giving feed out to other people, rather then give to the people in the south end of the parish. They would do it after she had gone for the day, so she has no use for them. Debra Barlow had something to do with this, and also a group called LEAN. I am not familiar with this group.
Most churches are destroyed in her area. There is a church in Abbeville that she trusts and it is called Harvest Time/a non denominational? church. This church took in 40 people from Plaquemines Parish who had no place to go. She said the church helping church idea is a good one.
Joelle has recently done an interview with Successful Farming. this is supposed to be broadcast on 11/25. I am not sure if this is tv or radio, and have never heard of it. This is the closest to national exposure that the area has seen. No news crews have been to her area to speak to anyone.
Joelle says that anything and everything is needed for human and animal victims. I told her that we were just individuals and we would get her some kind of help, but I didn't know if we could solve all of these problems. She said please help in any small way. She thanked me and thanked me for just calling her. She is not very computer savvy, but says she will do her best to answer emails. She might take awhile to get back to emails, because she is so tired everyday. She just recently learned how to hit the "enter" button to skip a line.
A partial list of items needed. I tried to write while she was talking.
#1-hay and dry small animal food
buckets
molasses blocks
cotton rolls
20cc syringes
Iodine
Clorox
livestock feed
alfalfa
Penicillin for livestock infections from barb wire
worm meds
hoof rot med
Encephalitis med
west nile virus meds
tetanus meds
bottled water
blankets
towels
pet carriers
barb wire
Joelle's message: Please send anything and she will find a use for it....
I told her that other people might be calling her and gave her both of your first names. She said she welcomed getting out her message where ever she could...because they had been forgotten. I wouldn't expect her to make many calls, because I don't think she has the $$. She says these people are used to taking care of themselves and their families, and only need the necessities to do it with.
Her numbers are:
home:337/893-0235
cell: 337/277-4239
"There is no way for them to make rescuers leave unless they start making up laws."
But they can make your life uncomfortable with harassment and by not allowing needed resources (like vets, funding, etc.).
But maybe I'm wrong, there could be something even more insidious going on.
I think there's a "starve the beast" strategy underway. If they could find a way to let the animal situation get really really bad, it would then become publicly acceptable, even "humane" to exterminate them. It's so much cheaper than trying to save them.
ARNO, ACA, and DRAR are doing incredible work but with their current resources, they can only catch a small percentage of all the animals that need to be rescued. They'll be allowed to operate to give an impression that the state govt is compassionate to the plight of animals. If these groups were formally asked to leave, the PR would be very bad for LA. The real scope of the problem, however, will be lost on the public. The state will spin this story: private and state rescuers valiantly try to rescue animals but could not get them all. Meanwhile, the larger scope of the problem, which can only be fixed with large infusions of money and logistical support, will never be fully known to most people.
It's just speculation. But there are similar strategies underway in national politics, so it's not a stretch....
they're also saavy political operators. Don't underestimate them.
Thanks for nothing Mrs. Littlefield. You know she said she "flew" over these area and said all was ok. I was on the phone conference when she said this. How about going out and talking to some people. Eric Rice
HUGE need in Vermilion parish
by lvmycritters, 11/21/05 18:17 ET
I spoke to Joelle for over an hour tonight...to make the following story short, what she told me is a nightmare.
org. name:Animal Aid Vermilion Area(they are 501.c.3)
(The people/environment of south Vermillion Parish)
They have not seen Salvation Army. Red Cross came once, but said they were very busy and have not been seen since. Fema was seen, but she said FEMA doesn't know what they are doing and were running around in circles getting nothing done. Some of the people have not seen anyone but this lady since the hurricanes. Many are trying to live in tents and campers. They had well water, but salt water and oily sludge have overflowed the wells and made the water unfit. Joelle is trying to take them some bottled water that she gets in for donations, and they are driving to Abbeville to haul water themselves. A few are living in their house trailers with electricity, but the govt. is turning off their electricity because they are unable to raise their trailer to the required height in case of another storm. This is not causing the people to leave, instead they are living without elec.
Joelle received a load of blankets, clorox, water and towels for the animals from Indianapolis Humane Society, but the people do not have any means of staying warm, etc....so most blankets and towels have gone to the human victims. She is working out of an 18 wheeler trailer that she is renting and they come up and ask for these things. She is also giving Clorox when she has it and whatever else she has on hand. Some of the people have seen no support at all since the storms. A congressional group supposedly flew over the area 3 weeks ago, but didn't bring a film crew with them. The people haven't heard anything from them, since. No news crews have been to her area to speak to anyone. Everything south of Hwy. 82 is gone, all the way to the Gulf and Vermillion Bay. This includes numerous small towns, farms and islands where people and animals live. What Katrina missed, Rita damaged. Joelle and her husband have taken in one woman who had no place to go and no way to get there.
(The livestock)There were over 10,000 head of cattle in the parish when the hurricanes hit. She is not sure how many are left, but in the thousands. Some have been sold and some have died, but hay is still the biggest need she has. The small family farms are trying not to sell their cattle and other livestock, and are trying to hold on to them because this is all they know. Many livestock are also injured. People are approaching Joelle pleading for feed for pigs, chickens goats and horses. She has none of this food, but has told some to go to the feed store and charge a bag of feed on her acct. and she will worry about how to pay for it later. Livestock has been caught in barbwire fences, and now has infections and need simple medicine. Even alcohol is non existant. Most livestock have hoof rot from standing in the water so long. Pecan Island cattle are in the marshes and afraid to come out so the people leave food on the roadway when they have it. HSUS of the US donated 17 tons of cattle feed right after the hurricanes and it was gone in 2 hours. She hasn't seen or heard from them anymore. She did get one load of hay that was 2 or 3 years old, and it was falling apart, but the people were thrilled to get it. They had some hay put up for their livestock but it was ruined by the storms. The land is unfit to replant. Everything is either covered with goop or salt. There has been no rain to dilute the salt and toxic soil, so they can't plant rye grass. Bermuda grass will grow in more salty conditions, but it can't be planted until spring because it doesn't grow in winter. The county extension office closed permanently last week. She was responsible for getting the county agent approx. 70% of his donations but they stopped coming in, The extension office was so flustered, that they just closed it up and went to other jobs. Most of them either have destroyed or damaged homes. The govt. started out helping ranchers who had over 60 head of cattle, but even that has ended. Those small ranchers with under 60 head have not seen any govt. assistance for their animals. One man has over 400 head on 50 acres.There are 4 vets in the area. None of them have offered any kind of discounts on fees and the people can't afford to pay for the vet services. State vet Martha Littlefield has spoken to Joelle and doesn't seem to think these animals are in need. When the 17 tons of feed was gone in 2 hours, Joelle spoke to Martha and told her that they needed more help. Martha said there were 49 tons in the county extension barn. Joelle was standing in the barn when she was speaking to Martha and it was empty. Martha has not been around since then. It has been estimated that just the fence posts and fencing that has been destroyed will cost in excess of $1,000,000.00. (the pets)Joelle is feeding over 35 cats and as many dogs on Pecan Island. She did receive 1 load of cat and dog food from of all places, an agricultural high school in Mass. She is now almost out of dry pet food. She has no doghouses and no kennels. There is no one else feeding in the area south of her, except the people who she gives food to. Dogs and cats are everywhere, and most are injured, starving and covered in some kind of oily substance. Many are ill from drinking polluted water. Many people are still walking around in shock. Joelle is trying to foster out some of the animals she is taking in, but is mostly trying to feed and water animals in place. She still believes some owners will return and take their animals back, so she is holding animals without adopting out. She has 12 dogs in her home.
(Miscellaneous)There is one feed store that she trusts. The name is Thibodeaux. It is on State St. in Abbeville and she has an acct. there. She says it would be great for small donations to be called in there.
She was in touch with Farm Aide who was helping large ranchers some, but they started giving feed out to other people, rather then give to the people in the south end of the parish. They would do it after she had gone for the day, so she has no use for them.
Joelle says that anything and everything is needed for human and animal victims. I told her that we were just individuals and we would get her some kind of help, but I didn't know if we could solve all of these problems. She said please help in any small way. She thanked me and thanked me for just calling her.
A partial list of items needed. I tried to write while she was talking.#1-hay and dry small animal foodbucketsmolasses blockscotton rolls20cc syringesIodineCloroxlivestock feedalfalfaPenicillin for livestock infections from barb wireClavamoxRimadyl banaminenuflor worm medshoof rot medEncephalitis medwest nile virus medstetanus medsbottled waterblanketstowelspet carriersbarb wireJoelle's message: Please send anything and she will find a use for it....
MoneyVermillion Animal Aid5937 Veterans Memorial Dr. Abbeville, LA 70510
Dog & Cat Food Animal Aid c/o Joelle Rupert1101 West Port StreetAbbeville, LA 79510
Livestock Feed & Supplies Animal Aid c/o Brenda Hebert14312 W. Hwy 82Abbeville, LA 70510
Feed store account:Thibodeaux's Feeds, Inc2003 S. State Street, Box 27Abbeville, LA 70510(337) 898-1829
She said she welcomed getting out her message where ever she could...because they had been forgotten. She says these people are used to taking care of themselves and their families, and only need the necessities to do it with.
Thank you for any help you can give to them. It is a tragic story of people and animals who have been forgotten by both wealthy charities and wealthy govt. I only wish I could take back all of my donations until now and send everything to these people.
SueGTA1998@aol.com
30382.2.2. and at the expense
by imisnya, 11/21/05 18:57 ET
Re: HUGE need in Vermilion parish by lvmycritters, 11/21/05
of almost 3 months ofH@ll for these people with no hope in sight! I mean, the donated blankets and towels for the animals had to be given to the people because they had nothing and Littlefield is saying everything is ok? Which part of the toxic slew was she looking at? And am I the only one who wonders who is this Dr. Maxwell Lea, Jr., LA State Veterinarian person? Why don't I ever hear this person making a comment? Is this a puppet vet regime? Is this person alive? Why isn't he/she doing something like demote Littlefield?
I think the slamming needs to begin. Here ya go if you haven't memorized this info yet...
State of Louisiana Governent contacts:
Governor Kathleen BlancoOffice of the Governor
P.O. Box 94004; Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70804-9004Louisiana Governor:1-866-310-7617
ph: 866-366-1121; 225-342-0991; 225-342-7015, 225-925-1938 fax: 225-342-7099 web email: http://www.managekeelson.com/websites/la.gov/index.cfm?md=form&tmp=home&cfmid=146
Constituent services provides citizens of Louisiana with access to state government, and serves as a liaison between state departments and elected officials in order to be responsive to citizen's concerns.Phone: (225) 342-0991Fax: (225) 342-7099 http://www.gov.state.la.us/index.cfm?md=pagebuilder&tmp=home&cpid=17
Louisiana Recovery Authority: http://www.lra.louisiana.gov/contact_us.html
Andy Kopplin, Gov. Blanco's Chief of Staff 225-925-7331, (225) 342-7015Fax: (225) 342-7099
Dr. Maxwell Lea, Jr., LA State VeterinarianOffice of Animal Health Services, Louisiana Department of Agriculture & ForestryP.O. Box 1951; Baton Rouge, LA 70821-1951office: 225-925-3980, 225-925-3962
fax: 225-925-4103email:mlea@ldaf.state.la.us,maxwel_l@ldaf.state.la.us,info@ldaf.state.la.us website:www.ldaf.state.la.us
http://www.ldaf.state.la.us/contactus/default.asp
Dr. Martha A. Littlefield, Assistant State Veterinarian
Office of Animal Health Services, Louisiana Department of Agriculture & Forestry
P.O. Box 1951; Baton Rouge, LA 70821-1951
wk: 225-925-3980; desk: 225-935-2168; 225-933-8121
fax: 225-237-5555
email:malc@ldaf.state.la.us
Louisiana Board of Veterinary Medicine (LBVM) 225-342-2176 lbvm@eatel.net,admin@lsbvm.org
Bob Odin, Commissioner, Louisiana Department of Agriculture & Forestry: bobodom@ldaf.state.la.us
Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu
225-342-7009
fax: 225-342-1949email:ltgov@crt.state.la.us
http://www.mitchlandrieu.com/thanks.asp
Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
724 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
202-224-5824
Web Form: landrieu.senate.gov/contact/index.cfmsenator@landrieu.senate.gov
http://landrieu.senate.gov/hurricanes/index.cfm
Senator David Vitter (R - LA) 516 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
202-224-4623
web email: http://www.vitter.senate.gov/contact.cfm
http://vitter.senate.gov/
Congressman Charlie Melanconph
202-225-4031, 985-876-3033
fax: 985-872-4449
web email: http://www.melancon.house.gov/emailcharlie.asp
Congressman Jim McCreryph
202-225-2777
fax: 202-225-8039
Shreveport District Office - 318-798-2254
Leesville District Office - 337-238-0778
web email: http://mccrery.house.gov/contact.asp
LA State Senator Walter Boasso
(225) 342-2415, (225) 342-2415, (866) 406-6261boassow@legis.state.la.us
Post your comments on Surviving Katrina - Louisiana Senate Electronic Bulletin Board: http://senate.legis.state.la.us/Boasso/bbfinder.asp
Louisiana House of Representatives: http://house.louisiana.gov/H-Reps/members.asp?ID=104
LA State Representative Nita Rusich Hutterlarep104@legis.state.la.us
LA State Representative Kenneth L. Odinet, Sr.larep103@legis.state.la.us
Audobon Zoo, New Oleans
by bubbalilly, 11/21/05 17:31 ET
Please go and visit the animals. On the PBS special last night on animal rescue (replays Wed. 7 PM central time), it said that the animals are lonely and miss people coming by. The zoo had even asked military to come through and interact with the animals. If you have time, please go by and say, "hi" to the animals at the zoo. Also, encourage others to go. Thank you.
Dear Laura-
Thanks for responding. We tried since the second week to reach someone at the LASPCA, prior to finally setting up our own operation in New Orleans. Our experience in reaching out to the LASPCA to offer assistance has been corroberated by others. No one we know of had ever reached the LASPCA either. Naturally, the loss of offices, etc. caused the intial disconnect but as the rescue efforts were all being run via cel phone we were amazed that no one ever returned any calls to any of the phone numbers we left messages at, nor did we get a response to emails.
As an organization who partners with NY City animal control, and appreciates the necessity to primarily support the municipality's animal control agency, we were amazed that weeks and weeks after the disaster we still could not get in contact with the LASPCA. We followed the directions on the web site, called every number given to us by everyone (6 or so in total).
I hope you can understand the questions of competency which accordingly arise when the agency purportadely in charge is nowhere to be found for weeks after the disaster.
Having said that, I am thankful that your organization is up and running to some extent anyway. I must also thank you for visiting with Jane Garrison's operation and making an "assessment" of the situation for animals. Having spent most of October in New Orleans I was amazed to read that in your testimony in front of the City Council that you stated that the situation was under control.
That assertion is preposterous. I can only assume that you have not spent a lifetime in the field of finding packs of dogs and thus are unable to witness first hand the horrific situation which now exists in New Orleans. Yes, if you drive during the day you will not see many dogs. The same is true at night, only less so. You will see some dogs at night...but you will not find the packs. To find the packs one must know certain techniques.
If approximately 75% of these animals are not removed by trapping by Spring 2006 you will witness my following prediction come true. As more residents move into neighborhoods by Spring the entire dog population will congregate into the totally devestated areas. Therefore, the same population of dogs will then occupy only 25% of the area they are currently in. Add that factor to the puppies and kittens which will have been born in the Spring, and you will have packs of 25 and 50 dogs!
Have you ever seen a pack of 50 dogs? I have. Right in downtown Brooklyn in 1989 on DeKalb Ave, just blocks from Spike Lee's movie studio, at 4 AM. Imagine a scene in which every policeman and pedestrian and everyone looking out their windows to look at this parade (no other way to describe it). They simply walk by, usually following one little female lead dog. No one can do anything.
Once the packs become that large the city and the state will be forced to cordon off the totally devestaded areas (since there there won't be any residents) and start shooting and then bulldoze the homes.
The only way this time deadline can be met pro-actively is by an accelerated trapping operation, to my calculations, at a pace of 100 animals per day for the next six months. Everyone has their opinion of how many animals there are in the streets. I have my opinion as well. But instead of giving you yet another person's estimate let me instead explain why I suspect my estimate is likely to be accurate.
Considering that a rescue effort for animals of this epic proportion had never been attempted before in mankind's history, considering the fact that I know first hand that the thousands of well-intentioned volunteers who each made their small contribution in this rescue made numerous mistakes, bad judgement calls, did not follow instructions, were ineffective and inefficient with their time.....it is impossible to believe that more than 50% of the surviving animals could have been removed in the first two to three months. If thus far 8,000 or 15,000 (depends on which figure one believes) animals have been rescued then there must be anywhare between 8,000 to 15,000 more animals out there in the streets in New Orleans alone (assuming 50% were already removed--which is being overly optimistic in my opinion). No first time rescue operation could be so successful so as to be able to remove 50% of those animals within 3 months.
I recommend that you take the lead by organizing all the various operations (Winn Dixie, Muttshack, Jane, etc) to some extent and create a direct 24 hr liaison to all the operations there and get up to 100 traps being used every day. We just sent another small group of 3 people down this week. We will be sending groups down each month, culminating with one large group arriving in the Spring.
We look forward to your guidance and cooperation.
Sincerely yours,
Garo Alexanian
Must be:
Thibedeaux Feed Store
2003 S State St
Abbeville LA 70510
337 898 1829
ask for
Emile, or Renee
TO JOELLE AND THE PEOPLE TRYING TO HELP ANIMALS IN VERMILLION PARISH:
I am listing 3 groups for you to contact.
Hooved Animal Rescue & Placement located in Tangipahoa Parish. They might be able to give you some pointers on where to find the livestock hay and feed you need. They contacted the ASPCA in NYC and were awarded a grant to buy feed and supplies for a huge number of livestock, dogs and cats.
Website: http://www.harprescue.com/
E-mail: harporg@i-55.com
Phones: Debra Reid, Loranger, LA, President: 985-969-3167 or 985-969-3154
American SPCA - NYC
Website: www.aspca.org
Phone: 212-876-7700
Monday thru Friday, 9A-5P
They made a generous donation to HARP for both livestock and domestic animals. They have also helped innumerable other rescue people.
Humane Society of the United States
Website: www.hsus.org
Phone: 202-452-1100
I STRONGLY suggest you call all of these these rather than emailing since time is of the essence. They might not get to your email for a week or more. FYI, HSUS and ASPCA received millions of dollars publicly donated for the express benefit of hurricane animal victims. HSUS alone received $20 million and ASPCA received over $10 million so don't hesitate to ask them for help. They have been helping many groups where it is needed. But they don't know you need help unless you let them know of your situation so please act asap.
gdf wrote: "I find it hard to believe that there is a conspiracy afoot. The 'powers that be' are lacking in the competency and intelligence necessary to carry out a conspiracy. To be fair, the officials involved in this disaster have been through the worst stress imaginable. People's personalities do change under stress, and decision-making abilities are hampered."
As a resident of the hurricane zone, I don't elect "to be fair" with the politicians in this tragedy. Yes, they have been under stress but no moreso (or as much as) the citizens of the state they represent. The Governor isn't living in a FEMA trailer, she's residing in a fine Georgian-style Governor's mansion. The Mayor of New Orleans didn't lose his home nor his job. If the stress has hampered their abilities then they need to start looking for another line of work. Both the Gov and the Mayor spent millions to win their elected offices and I think the Three Stooges could have performed more admirably. Hopefully, neither one will be around after the next election. Not once, not one single time, has the Governor or the Mayor expressed any public concern for the animal victims. Lt. General Russell Honore assigned National Guard Troops to help with animal rescue. When Admiral Chad Allen took over Brownie's job with FEMA, he also assigned people to help with animal rescue. But the Governor and the Mayor have yet to utter one word about the plight of people's pets and the rest of the destitute animals.
I really got a big chuckle from a letter written by Garo Alexanian that is posted on this blog. The letter is addressed to LASPCA Laura Maloney from Alxanian whose organization apparently partners with New York City's animal control.
Mr. (or Ms) Alexanian states in the letter to Maloney, "I can only assume that you have not spent a lifetime in the field of finding packs of dogs and thus are unable to witness first hand the horrific situation which now exists in New Orleans."
Well, Mr. Alexaniam, you assume correctly. Laura Maloney had no background whatsoever in animal welfare or humane society operations when she was hired by the LASPCA for their top job. She was hired as Executive Director without a smidgen of experience in the field. She was employed by the SPCA on June 1, 2001. She now has tenure of a little over 4 years with the SPCA but you can rest assured she hasn't done any kind of field work, much less finding packs of dogs. She might break a nail or something if she did actual labor. So her experience consists of sitting behind a desk dispensing orders and raising funds. Oh, I forgot. If the SPCA field officers and police officers break up a dog-fighting ring, she will be there to talk to the press and take credit.
Here's what her resume`states about her animal work experience. She worked for the Philadelphia Zoo, the Central Park Zoo in NYC and the Acquarium of Americas in New Orleans. Her husband is the Curator of the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. Sounds like politics to me. Now tell me? Would you hire someone as an Executive Director of a humane society if they had never ever worked with cats and dogs before? I might hire someone like that to train for kennel work, but not to run the show.....and I guess this is why Laura Maloney thinks everything is "under control"....because she doesn't have any idea what's going on.
Unfortunately I agree with the logic that leads some of us to suspect that Littlefield, Maloney, and cohorts will decide to launch an extensive animal extermination campaign over the next months. The only way to prevent this is to make the concept so abhorrent now, that if done it would be clear what the plan was all along.
Refusal of help, refusal to adequately examine the numbers of still lost pets, and the refusal to support nationally recognized volunteer organizations by allowing them to use qualified volunteer veterinarians speaks of a plan of calculated deliberate neglect.
I am deeply sorry to think this, but evidence leads me to this conclusion of such a potential massacre.
God help us.
Saffron
re: Joelle
Try Lone Star Equine Rescue from College Station, TX
contact person: Jennifer Williams (per their website)
phone (979) 776-9396
email jenn@lser.org
This group may be able to help and also provide additional resources to contact. (IIRC they did help out after Katrina hit.) They probably know other large animal rescue groups. (Was there a large animal rescue from FLA/GA or ALA that helped out in Miss?!)
Anyone have an update on Biloxi situation? EDNAH hearing outcome?
November 13, 2005
The amazing story of Kanga and Roo!
Filed under: Animal Smiles Aids the Animals — Laura @ 2:34 pm
Yesterday I accidentally met the new owner of one of my FAVORITE dogs from LA (for now they are foster parents, but on 12/31 they become her forever owner.) Her name is Kanga and she was found with her owner who had passed away…SHE WOULD NOT LEAVE HIM…except that she went out during the storm and neighbors saw her with something in her mouth…it turns out that 2 1/2 weeks later when rescuers finally broke in, they found that she had rescued a little pit mix puppy. He is not her pup…she just rescued him. He is called Roo…and he is way too rambunctious so they separated him from her after she injured her hip. He is being fostered separately, but they will have play dates. Isn’t that a wonderful story?
also re: Joelle
I would definitely go knocking on both PASADOs and AMERICAN HUMANEs Doors!!
Pasados site touts that they rescue all creatures "great" and small including farm animals AND this would give them an oportunity to improve their image after EDNAH. (Or at least share some of the wealth from Katrina donations. At the very least might know other large animal rescue groups to contact?!)
American Humane was the only group (I think) that went into So. LA And TX after Rita; don't know why they didn't stay. BUT after racking in the donations from Katrina, they SHOULD be more than willing to part with some of it to help out!!
CALL BOTH!!
Just in case anyone cares. Another report that can't be true. Except they
are because I got in my car last weekend and drove (not fly over in an
airplane) down to these places and found more misery and more forgotten
American than I care to think about. They are getting NOTHING in terms of
support...and are having to BEG for people to help them. Most have NO homes
and WE can't figure out how to get them ENOUGH feed and medicine for their
livestock even though this is the USA.
Eric Rice
> Subject: Fw: Report from Vermilion Parish (SW LA)
>
>
> >
> > > Subject: Report from Vermilion Parish (SW LA)
> > >
> > >
> > > Marnie,
> > >
> > > Thank you for your concern about the situation in Vermilion Parish.
The
> > > small animals are starting to emerge from their hiding places. The
cats
> > > seem to have made it better than the dogs and livestock. We are
feeding
> > > over 45 cats that have turned up in Pecan Island. It is hard to
believe
> > > that there were that many cats on the Island before Rita. We are
feeding
> > > the cats while waiting to see if any of the owners are coming back or
at
> > > least, until we can gain their trust. Some of them are still very
> > > afraid. We
> > > have either furnished the dog food and other small animal food or have
> > > put them in foster care.
> > >
> > > We are also trying hard to get donations for the large animals. The
need
> > > for livestock is overwhelming. There were over 10,000 head of cattle
> > > affected alone and at least 3,000 horses. It is difficult to know how
> > > many have been
> > > sold at this time. Their owners, in many cases, are middle aged or
older
> > > and do not have any other form of income. In fact, many of the
families
> > > have been ranchers for several generations. They have, in most cases,
> > > lost cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, chickens, hay, and their pasture is
> > > covered with salt from the surge. We have had little rain , so the
salt
> > > just stays there. The rye grass can not be planted because of the
salt,
> > > the hay that flooded is lost , the barns are lost, the fences are
gone,
> > > many of their homes are destroyed or damaged. The ranchers that have
> > > smaller herds usually can not afford the feed now because they are
> > > trying to survive and provide the bare necessities for their families
> > > that are so often taken for granted.
> > >
> > > At this point, any help is greatly appreciated. We are trying to help
> > > these people as best as possible, though we are working out of the
back
> > > end of a tractor trailer. It is a shame to say that almost all of the
> > > help that has been given to us has come from outside of the state of
> > > Louisiana. We are attempting to help the people with all of their
> > > animals, either large or small. We are trying to get enough feed to
> > > these farmers and ranchers for their animals to make it through the
> > > winter months. We have had very little exposure of our needs on a
> > > national level so we are extremely grateful for any help we can
receive.
> > >
> > > Thank you,
> > >
> > > Joelle Rupert
> > > Abbeville LA
> > > 337-893-0235 home
> > > 337-277-4239 cell
> > > --
> > >
> > > Forwarded with permission by Marnie Reeder
> > >
> > >
Maybe I live in a fantasy world, but this morning the thought kept running through my mind . . . what if we could bring all those troops home from Iraq, let them have a fabulous holiday and then set them off to work on rebuilding New Orleans and surrounding areas. They could accomplish so much in a short time that will likely take decades to complete otherwise.
Wouldn't that be an amazing turn of events that would change the world (and the world's view of us) and show how Americans (can) take care of their own? Those billions of dollars would go a long way rebuilding something rather than blowing it up.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Following is a small sampling of rescue work and vet care, or lack thereof due to the eviction of out-of-state vets by the State Vet's office, over the past week only.
1. 11/19/05 Animal Rescue New Orleans reports that "Of the approximately 380 or so animals we have humanely trapped and rescued over the last 2 weeks (since November 1, 2005), approximately 45 of them were brought in as critical needing emergency vet care. 50-60% of these 45 critical animals exhibited symptoms of "extreme starvation" according to veterinarians from two local reputable animal hospitals who treated them.": http://www.animalrescueneworleans.com
2. 11/19/05 Eric Rice tabulates weekly rescue average - "ARNO: 27 dogs (I was on site and counted myself), Winn Dixie: 13 DogsLASPCA: 30 dogs (approx as reported by them), Muttshack: 9 dogs = 79 X 7 DAYS = would be 553 total for week. (Note: other days appeared consistent with this and yesterday Nov 18th Animal Rescue New Orleans brought in 32 both cats and dogs).": http://ericsdogblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/forgotten-ones-whether-it-be-4-or-4000.html
3. 11/18/05 Report from Pecan Island, Vermilion Parish: "feeding 45 cats": http://neworleans.craigslist.org/pet/112269233.html
4. 11/18/05 Found cat in the Garden District: http://www.nola.com/forums/uptown/index.ssf?searchart?artid=18848
5. 11/16/05 Animal Rescue Front rescues 4 puppies from underground an abandoned building: http://www.animalrescuefront.net [Reference picture of recently rescued dog who has gone blind due to dehydration and was being treated by an out-of-state vet: http://www.animalrescuefront.net/content/Portals/0/Picture%20119.jpg ]
6. 11/16/05: 50 Cats rescued in Kenner by Animal Rescue New Orleans and Alley Cat Allies - Approx. 100 animals including dogs, bunnies and many more cats are still in need of rescue there.:http://www.alleycat.org/katrina.html#bull
7. 11/16/05 Orleans Parish resident reports "a lot" of stray cats in the 70115 area.": http://www.nola.com/forums/townhall/index.ssf?artid=56116
8. 11/15/05 Animal Rescue Front tracks & catches 9 dogs: http://www.animalrescuefront.net
9. 11/15/05 Animal Rescue New Orleans reports they "currently have more than 3,000 locations in our database where animals have been reported hiding under porches and homes.": http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/11/1784228.php
10. 11/15/05 Alley Cat Allies reports "We currently have no out-of-state volunteer veterinarians (of which we have five offers).": http://www.nola.com/forums/animals/index.ssf?artid=113803
11. 11/15/05 Tylertown turns away four dogs due to lack of space: http://www.nola.com/forums/animals/index.ssf?artid=113771
12. 11/14/05 AnimalRescueNewOrleans.com reports "Rescued 13 cats, 17 puppies, and 22 dogs today.": http://www.animalrescueneworleans.com
13. 11/14/05 Animal Rescue Front reports "Monday we were in a neighborhood and had surrounded a home where three dogs [reference picture of one rescued dog: http://www.animalrescuefront.net/content/Portals/0/Picture%20152.jpg ] had crawled underneath....and out of the three two of them were wearing collars. Collars that their owners had put around their necks...collars that indicated to us that someone, somewhere was wondering what had happened to them and probably thinking they were dead...I've said it before and I'll say it again...the animals roaming the streets, and there are hundreds, had homes before the storm...and it's the decent thing to do everything we can to bring them back to those homes... ": http://www.animalrescuefront.net
There is a blog site just put up for Joelle http://vermillionanimalaid.blogspot.com/
Also there is an urgent need for animal help/rescue in Hammond, LA. per the nola.com forum post #30512!
30583. from:savethehorses.org
by nutsabtsqrls, 11/23/05 9:47 ET
Please crosspost/thank you
I am getting feed and hay plus other supplies, including fencing, to take down to Plaquimies for Lori, on or about Dec 4th. I am bringing a farrier and hoof supplies for thrush. If she needs some of it more, I will bring it to her. I am trying to get everything donated and pick up before I go. I am near Atlanta, three and a half tons of grain are in SC along with the hay. Fencing is from VA to GA. If anyone has donations, gather them and contact me to see if someone can transport here. I think I have a few people in trucks to help too.Cherylwww.savethehorses.org.
BF PR: spend $ as intended
by Balyn, 11/23/05 7:40 ET
Hurricane Katrina: Campaign Urges National Animal Organizations to Spend the Millions Raised to Help Family Pets, as Intended
11/23/2005 6:00:00 AM
To: National Desk. Contact: Barbara Williamson, 435-644-2001, ext. 252, 435-689-0200 (cell) orbarbara@bestfriends.org or Elissa Jones, 435-644-3965, ext. 4289,elissa@bestfriends.org
KANAB, Utah, Nov. 23 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Three months after Hurricane Katrina, thousands of homeless pets still cling to life on the streets, waiting to be rescued, according to an assessment revealed by Best Friends Animal Society today. The organization, which runs the nation's largest companion animal sanctuary, is launching a petition drive on behalf of these pets and their displaced families. "Compassionate citizens have already given their money to this cause. Now we're asking them to give their voices, too, by signing a petition to ensure that these dogs and cats in the Gulf Coast region are not abandoned and that donated money be spent for what it was intended," said Paul Berry, Best Friends' director of operations.
Most national organizations suspended rescue operations over a month ago. But three months after the hurricane, independent rescuers report that thousands of displaced pets, belonging to people who have lost their homes, are still clinging to life, and that their situation is critical. Many of these pets are in destroyed and abandoned areas where food sources such as garbage cans are not available, and many of the structures these pets are using for shelter will soon be bulldozed.
"We've been working on the frontlines of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts since late August, and have not given up," said Berry. "Our emergency rescue shelter outside of New Orleans still has up to 600 animals on any given day and brings in up to 40 animals a day from volunteer rescuers who continue to work in the field."
Berry said the Best Friends assessment, which was conducted last week, has confirmed some urgent and disturbing facts about the ongoing need for rescue efforts. The report -- http://www.bestfriends.org -- cites interviews with local animal control officials, veterinarians, rescue agencies, and volunteers across the region.
"People all over the country donated tens of millions of dollars to rescue these animals," said Berry. "All it takes now is a commitment from the animal welfare organizations to finish the job they undertook."
That commitment includes:
-- Providing volunteers to continue rescuing displaced pets still alive on the streets, encouraging volunteers to continue rescuing pets still alive on the streets, and providing staging areas to get them to safety
-- Conducting a national adoption drive for all pets not reclaimed by their families
"Working together, we can do better than simply allowing these pets who have clung to life for so long to become the next generation of strays who will reproduce and ultimately be euthanized," said Berry.
Best Friends is asking everyone who donated money to the rescue effort to sign a petition urging national animal welfare organizations to continue the rescue work as long as these traumatized family pets are still alive."We are inspired by Mayor Nagin's plan to rebuild a better New Orleans," said Berry, who is a native New Orleanian. "If funds remain after the rescue efforts are complete, they should be used to build a better New Orleans for companion animals. Once the remaining pets are safe, we can join together to invest in programs that will radically improve the quality of life for animals in the Gulf Coast region."
These programs would include:
-- Low-cost, high-volume spay/neuter facilities
-- Neighborhood no-kill sheltering and adoption capabilities
-- Affordable health care for pets of low-income families
-- Model legislation to end dog fighting and related animal abuse
"This was an unprecedented tragedy for people and their pets," said Berry. "But for local humane groups, once the rescue efforts are complete it can now be a unique opportunity to create a new reality for companion animals. "So many people have given their time, effort, and money to the cause. Now they all need to add their voice to how the remaining money should be spent. That's why we're launching a petition drive to support this vision for the animals."
For a copy of the report and to join the petition drive, go to http://www.bestfriends.org. About Best Friends Animal Society
Best Friends Animal Society is working with shelters and rescue groups nationwide to bring about a time when there will be no more homeless pets. Best Friends operates the nation's largest sanctuary for homeless animals, provides adoption, spay/neuter, and educational programs, and publishes Best Friends, the nation's largest general-interest animal magazine.
"A better world through kindness to animals" http://www.usnewswire.com/
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=57116
a friend of mine wrote this.....
by tlmeier, 11/22/05 23:43 ET
As one of the many people that sacrificed everything and went to New Orleans 3 times in order to help save all of these helpless animals I would like to say a few things:First is:Thank you God for allowing me this opportunity to help make a difference.Thank you God for introducing me to other human beings willing to give of themselves.Thank you God for the strength to get up every day and attempt to exist in this world.And then I question:Why would something like this happen?Why do people judge and criticize when they slept in a warm safe bed every night?Why do I still have nightmares and visions of all of the animals I found left chained that hung themselves trying not to drown?Why am I still able to smell death?Why can I still hear the screams of the animals as they died in my arms from dehydration?Why can't I get the blood stains out of my jeans from the rottie that was shot and left to die?Why are the animals punished for human ignorance?For anyone that was there God Bless you!For those who have supported us Thank you!For those who have judged and criticized Shame on youlook in a mirror first.The search continues..........I'll be there will you
Katrina Dog Abused
by lauralass, 11/22/05 18:50 ET
PETA URGES D.A. TO CHARGE APPARENT OFFICIAL CAUGHT ON VIDEOTAPE ABUSING KATRINA DOG 2:57 PM
Nationally Televised Footage Shows Terrified Dog Choked, Dragged!
For Immediate Release:November 10, 2005
Contact:Martin Mersereau 757-622-7382
Indio, Calif.--- After receiving shocking footage of a uniformed man violently dragging a dog who had been evacuated from the hurricane-ravaged Gulf region, PETA has mailed the incriminating tape to Assistant District Attorney Sue Steding, along with a letter urging her to immediately file cruelty charges. The tape, which was shot by a freelance journalist and originally aired on the TV show Inside Edition, shows a man sources have identified as Riverside County Animal Control Officer Jacob Jenkins flipping, choking, and ultimately dragging a frightened dog off an airplane and across the tarmac, allegedly inflicting bloody wounds in the process.
The footage can be viewed at http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=katrina_dragging.
PETA believes that the officer’s actions clearly violated California law, which prohibits "subject[ing] any animal to needless suffering, or inflict[ing] unnecessary cruelty upon the animal, or in any manner abus[ing] any animal."
"After all this dog had been through, it’s inexcusable that she endured further torment from anyone," says PETA Casework Division Manager Martin Mersereau. "If what appears on the tape is as abusive as it seems, this kind of treatment cannot be allowed to go unpunished."
PETA’s letter to Assistant District Attorney Sue Steding follows.
November 4, 2005
Sue Steding, Assistant District AttorneyRiverside County District Attorney’s Office82-675 Hwy. 111, 4th Fl.Indio, CA 92201
November 22, 2005 : 2:01 AM ET
posted by: geoffandmichele
I have just returned from helping with Jane Garrison's group (www.animalrescueneworleans.com) They, along with the other groups like Alley Cat allies (Jim and Clare) are doing a wonderful job, but they need more help. In spite of the rumours circulating in the media, there are lots of animals needing food and water, the experienced trappers are responing as directed to locations where animals are known to be. If you were wondering about these groups, fear not. They are passionate, dedicated and a great group of people. They are rapidly turning from a group of volunteers into a professional organization filling an expanding void. If the politics could be dropped, and the slanted news reports straightened, the animals would benefit. If you have time, go and volunteer. You must be willing to follow the game plan, follow through on what you promise, be accountable for your actions. There is more need than I ever imagined. The people of NO are some of the nicest I have ever met, they have been through more than I ever likely will. The animals are helpless. If you cannot volunteer time, consider donations.
Geoff Kleine-Deters Vancouver
ROE vs WADE
>> >
>> > The mayor of New Orleans was asked about his position on Roe vs
>> Wade.
>> >
>> > He said he didn't really care how people got out of the city.
I can not find the Best Friends report/assesment referenced below, can anyone show a direct link?
"Berry said the Best Friends assessment, which was conducted last week, has confirmed some urgent and disturbing facts about the ongoing need for rescue efforts. The report -- http://www.bestfriends.org -- cites interviews with local animal control officials, veterinarians, rescue agencies, and volunteers across the region."
I, too, have been unable to locate a copy of the much-touted survey taken of the animal situation in New Orleans. I understand it is on the Best Friends website but I can't find it. If anyone has read this survey report, please post the link. Thanks.
The survey taken by LASPCA can be found here on their web site
http://www.la-spca.org/archive/111805katrina.htm
But I don't believe that is the report Best Friends is referring to.
Here is a direct link to the report referenced by Best Friends
http://network.bestfriends.org/News/PostDetail.aspx?g=86da7a605ab011da8cd60800200c9a66&np=107
This one still cracks me up...Eric Rice
FROM: Marvin Montgomery General Counsel La. Dept. Ag. & Forestry 225-922-1234
PRIVILEGED & CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION:
November 2, 2005
Mr. Eric Rice Via e-mail only
Re: Communications with Dr. Martha Littlefield
Dear Mr. Rice:
Your e-mails directed to Dr. Martha Littlefield, assistant State Veterinarian with this Department have been forwarded to me for review because of the number of e-mails you have been sending to her. Please be assured that this Department and Dr. Littlefield are as concerned with animal welfare as you. However, repeated e-mails over a situation that none of us have any control over uses up time and resources that can be put to better use.
After Hurricane Katrina this Department cooperated with public and private agencies to assist in the coordination of rescue and shelter operations for animals abandoned or lost as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Dr. Littlefield served as this Department’s liaison with this team of agencies. However, under Louisiana law, neither this Department nor Dr. Littlefield regulates the SPCA or the rescue and sheltering of animals in New Orleans. These functions are regulated by the SPCA in New Orleans in conjunction with the New Orleans city government.
The destruction in New Orleans is beyond comprehension. What one sees on television cannot begin to show the extent of the devastation. It is safe to say that only a minority of businesses and agencies that were in New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina are currently operations. We have no idea when such businesses and agencies, including the SPCA will be fully functional again. The fact that SPCA does not have telephone communications or someone to answer the telephone is not a matter that this Department can control. It is therefore, unnecessary, to keep sending an e-mail to Dr. Littlefield regarding this situation.
It is unnecessary to continue e-mailing Dr. Littlefield regarding the situation in New Orleans or to send her e-mails regarding rescue efforts in New Orleans. Therefore I, on behalf of Dr. Littlefield and the Department of Agriculture and Forestry ask you to remove Dr. Littlefield’s name and this Department’s name from your e-mail distribution list and to cease e-mailing or attempting to contact Dr. Littlefield about any matter. If you have complaints regarding Dr. Littlefield or this Department you may send them by U. S mail to my attention, but we will not respond to any e-mails from you.
Future attempts to e-mail this Department or Dr. Littlefield will be blocked and any attempt to contact Dr. Littlefield in any other way will be reviewed for possible harassment with referral of the matter to the proper law enforcement authorities, if necessary.
Sincerely,
J. Marvin Montgomery General Counsel, LDAF
You have to wonder what planet are these people on??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
It is just so silly that it ends up being one of those really funny things. Everytime I read it I just can't help but laugh inside for like 5 minutes.
I went to my sent box and I had sent her 6 emails, none very inflammatory.
She is a public official I think. Her email was public. She ran the affairs of the state regarding animals in this crisis. She shut the rescue operation down on Sept 30th just 30 some days after THE WORST DISASTER IN US HISTORY where a population of 1,000,000 evacuated and some huge % of those left animals behind. That when it looks like groups were needed for at least 6 months. She would not help extend the Exec order to allow out of states vets to continue working when we show daily proof they are still needed. And then she gets mad about a few emails when all of us were getting 300-400 emails a day as well. Eric Rice
Martha refuses to get her feet wet. She stated on one call that "she flew over the area" and the pastures look fine. I swear on my own life she said that. While the first thing I would think to do is take a drive down and even throw a few supplies in my car as every little bit helps.
....State vet Martha Littlefield has spoken to Joelle and doesn't seem to think these animals are in need. When the 17 tons of feed was gone in 2 hours, Joelle spoke to Martha and told her that they needed more help. Martha said there were 49 tons in the county extension barn. Joelle was standing in the barn when she was speaking to Martha and it was empty. Martha has not been around since then...
Eric
to:samoore@saveadog.orgDate: 2005-11-23, 5:59PM CST
I've been working the field in NOLA this week and because my van has a big dog on the side of it and says rescue, I have been stopped repeatedly by pet owners looking for their pets. People have flagged me down even in the dark and one just about ran me off the road to stop me, tearfully begging to help her get her dog back. Many of these people do not have internet access and the ones who do cannot find their dogs on petfinder or petharbor. I have been on the internet looking for pets for people as well and it's exasperating to say the least. I would love to brainstorm with people on this. Here are some ideas I have come up with so far, for the rescuers:
Go back over your pictures and notes and fill in details on any pets you rescued. If you don't have a specific address, give a neighborhood, like Garden District.
Write a letter to the pet owner (if you have an address). Mail is being forwarded even to those evacuees out of state.
Offer a kiosk area at the shelters where the pets are being held so at least the owners can look online.
Computer people who can't be down here, offer your services to help search for lost pets online.
Let's hand out posters, post posters everywhere, and get some public service announcements out there explaining how pet owners can go about searching for their pets.
If you're trapping, please make sure these are actual strays by checking with the neighbors first. Several pet owners just lost their pets this week, after returning home. Did anyone take a black lab out of the Garden district lately? Maybe we should provide free microchipping to pet owners returning so we don't re-rescue their pets.
For shelter people, take better pictures (like retake them now), give better descriptions, even of behaviors that might not show up in a picture.
For petfinder/petharbor developers, can you group these dogs by neighborhood or make some improvements for ease of use. For example, instead of making them click on Advanced search options, display that menu as a default option, the menu that lets them put their street name in. I'm computer savvy and even I had problems with this "feature".
This isn't meant as a criticism but as a means to reunite the pets with their rightful owners. I've seen too many tears these past few days, enough to make me think long and hard about how we can do our job better to get these pets back to their owners. Let's put our thinking caps on and figure out a way to make this workable. I'm willing to put a team together to work on this.
Shirley from Save A Dog Wayland, MA
Eric -
You can tell J. Marvin Montgomery, General Counsel for the Louisiana Department of Agriculture & Forestry for me that he, Martha Littlefield, Maxwell Lea, Jr., and their whole department are public servants being paid by the taxpayer. They owe us answers for any questions we ask.
The taxpayers want answers for the incompetence of Littlefield and Lea especially. We do not work for them, they work for us and they owe the citizens of Louisiana an explanation for the abysmally stupid actions they have taken with the animal situation.
Don't you just love it when these two-bit lawyers threaten lawsuits? This is just another tactic used in "Cover Your Ass" strategies. It would be nice if they would sue, then it could be proved how negligent they have been.
Dear Eric:
that threat of a lawsuit from an attorney who works for the state in which I live, vote, and pay taxes appalls me. On behalf of the normal residents of this state, I apologize to you on behalf of the impotents in charge.
Perhaps it's the southern vernacular that has led ot a complete miscomprehension on the difference between the terms "important" which is used to refer to a matter deserving of attention and action, such as the needs of the animals across south Louisiana, with "impotent" which now seems best used to refer to many of the offficials of this state.
Warmest Regards to you and yours on this Thanksgiving day,
Kathryn.
p.s. thanks for listing link to Joelle Rupert's new blog. I dont' know if it will help get the word out or not, but my motto is that any action is better than no action.
Email I received from Debra Barlow, of www.hopefulhaven.com, a Shreveport based horse rescue operation, which has been cnovoying hay and feed to SOuth Louisiana every two weeks:
"Kinship Circle , Best Friends, and the Grassroots Efforts have totally been behind HHERO's efforts in helping the livestock of Vermillion Parish. Brenda has tireslessly advertised and crossposted for our efforts on the convoys. I crosspost this to aid in the petition and assessment signatures needed.
Kinship Circle wrote:
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 23:29:38 -0600
Subject: Petition & Assessment - Homeless Hurricane Animals
From: Kinship Circle
To: 5 Katrina Animal Rescue info@kinshipcircle.org
PETITION: Petition to save homeless hurricane animals
To: The National Humane Organizations
SIGN PETITON: http://network.bestfriends.org/Petitions/Detail.aspx?pn=2
We, the undersigned, urge the national humane organizations to use all the
resources and funds that were donated to the hurricane relief effort to
ensure that animals still surviving on the streets of the Gulf region are
rescued and cared for...
Assessment of Greater New Orleans and Gulf Coast Region as of Nov 20, 2005
http://network.bestfriends.org/News/PostDetail.aspx?g=86da7a605ab011da8cd60800200c9a66&np=107
November 22, 2005
During the week of November 13-20, 2005, five Best Friends staffers
conducted a comprehensive needs assessment in the greater New Orleans and
Gulf Coast region.
Mississippi assessment areas: Jackson, Hancock, and Harrison counties.
Louisiana assessment areas: Jefferson Parish, Orleans Parish, St. Bernard
Parish, and Plaquemines Parish.
The team was led by Best Friends’ director of operations, Paul Berry, and
included Sherry Woodard and Ethan Gurney (who have been leading rescue and
animal care efforts since early September), Steven Hirano (development
director), and Barbara Williamson (media relations manager).
Overall Summary
Many thousands of former pets remain displaced by Hurricane Katrina and its
aftermath. Many of these pets are existing in now unpopulated and unsafe
areas, unable to be rescued by their owners.
Volunteers are still needed to feed and humanely trap these pets; holding
facilities are needed throughout the region to provide temporary housing;
and a major public campaign must be launched to encourage the fostering and,
where needed, the adoption of these pets.
Following are findings by county or parish:
Jackson County, Mississippi
(Ocean Springs, Gautier, etc.)
Summary:
We interviewed Barbara McKenzie, director of Gulf Coast SPCA. McKenzie has
been assisting rescue and recovery efforts in Jackson, Hancock and Harrison
counties. Her organization is headquartered in Hancock County, where the
majority of her efforts have been focused.
McKenzie explained that county animal control director Bill Richman has been
working hands-on since the hurricane to keep pace with animal rescues. She
further explained that Hancock County has had eight animal control officers
(ACOs) patrolling since recovery efforts began there, and that their field
efforts have had significant success in rescuing displaced pets from the
area.
The result is that there is no urgent need for more field rescue personnel,
but that the county shelter is “overflowing” with unclaimed pets. And,
without sufficient help in transport and placement outside the disaster
area, the shelter has had to resort to routine euthanasia to keep pace with
rescue intake.
Many of the animals rescued are in definite need of general veterinary care
for hunger, skin ailments, etc. Private veterinarians have returned to the
area and are in full operation.
Immediate needs:
* A short-term holding facility to administer veterinary and general health triage
* Subsidized veterinary support and support personnel for short-term triage
* Transport vehicles to move animals from triage to placement outside the
rescue area as part of a national adoption campaign
Long-term needs:
* Affordable, high-volume spay/neuter services for low-income family pets,
with the goal of achieving zero euthanasia for healthy and treatable pets
* Access to affordable general veterinary care for low-income family pets to
reduce general, treatable ailments such as mange, heartworm and fleas
Harrison County, Mississippi
(Pass Christian, Gulfport, Biloxi, etc.)
Summary:
Best Friends interviewed Tara High, executive director of the Humane Society
of South Mississippi (HSSM), which provides animal control services for
Gulfport, Biloxi, Long Beach, Pass Christian and Harrison County.
HSSM is the second largest animal control district in the disaster area.
(Jefferson Parish has the largest animal control district and Orleans Parish
has the third largest district.)
High explained that there are currently seven ACOs operating in Harrison
County, managing rescue operations of displaced pets. She said that more
rescuers are needed, as there are still many displaced pets at large.
The HSSM shelter is currently operating beyond its normal capacity of 125
animals, sheltering a daily average of 200 rescued animals.
The state vet has mandated a five-day holding period for all rescued
animals, to give owners a chance to reclaim their pets. High said there is
an urgent need to transport animals to placement outside of the area after
the five-day holding period has been fulfilled, to relieve the over-burdened
shelter facility. As in Jackson County, without sufficient help in transport
and placement outside the disaster area, the shelter has had to resort to
routine euthanasia to keep pace with rescue intake.
Many of the animals rescued are in definite need of general veterinary care
for hunger, skin ailments, etc. Private veterinarians have returned to the
area and are in full operation, but more veterinary support is needed.
High explained that the state vet office in Mississippi has maintained a
cooperative relationship with the various agencies in Mississippi and she
recommends working with that office to secure additional veterinary support.
Immediate needs:
* Rescuers and rescue support personnel to augment ongoing ACO efforts
* A short-term holding facility to administer veterinary and general health triage
* Subsidized veterinary support and support personnel for short-term triage
* Transport vehicles to move animals from triage to placement outside the
rescue area as part of a national adoption campaign
Long-term needs:
* Affordable, high-volume spay/neuter services for low-income family pets,
with the goal of achieving zero euthanasia for healthy and treatable pets
* Access to affordable general veterinary care for low-income family pets to
reduce general, treatable ailments such as mange, heartworm and fleas
* In January 2006, HSSM will finish construction on a 5,000square-foot
medical facility that, with sufficient subsidy and transport, can
significantly augment the above needs for the three-county region
Hancock County, Mississippi
(Waveland, Bay St. Louis, etc.)
Summary:
Best Friends interviewed Renee Lick, director of Waveland Animal Shelter
(WAS), which provides animal control services for Waveland, Bay St. Louis
and Hancock County. WAS currently has four ACOs managing the animal rescue
and rescue sheltering.
After the mandatory five-day holding period, animals are transferred by In
Defense of Animals (IDA) to the Best Friends emergency shelter in Tylertown.
Because of this ongoing support from IDA and Best Friends, WAS rescue
operations and shelter operations have stabilized.
Veterinary support is provided by a local veterinarian in Waveland, and Best
Friends’ volunteer veterinarians in Tylertown have been sufficient to meet
animal medical needs.
The WAS shelter facility was temporarily condemned after the hurricane, but
shelter personnel were eventually allowed to reopen the facility. It is not
clear whether the shelter will be again condemned and destroyed, or salvaged
and refurbished for shelter operations. The facility is 30 years old, and
has poor ventilation and insufficient space for animals and personnel.
Two animal control vehicles were lost in the hurricane.
Immediate needs:
* Maintain current rescue and triage operations
* Maintain current level of veterinary support
* Maintain current transport support to placement outside the rescue area
* Two fully equipped animal control vehicles to replace those lost in the storm
Long-term needs:
* Affordable, high-volume spay/neuter services for low-income family pets,
with the goal of achieving zero euthanasia for healthy and treatable pets
* Access to affordable general veterinary care for low-income family pets to
reduce general treatable ailments such as mange, heartworm, and fleas
* A new shelter facility with good ventilation, a proper adoption facility,
and sufficient space for animals and staff
St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana
Summary:
Best Friends interviewed Ceily Trog, director of animal control for St.
Bernard Parish, as well as various personnel working there on recovery
efforts.
Trog explained that the parish is in the very early stages of recovery, and
animal control services are in limited operation. Trog lost all of her
personnel, except for one employee. The animal shelter and shelter office
were fully flooded. Trog and parish personnel are now trying to restore the
shelter to working order. No animals are currently held there. The portable
office building was damaged beyond repair.
Though there are slight contradictions regarding numbers of animals
remaining in St. Bernard Parish, all reports indicate that the need for
animal rescue in the parish has significantly diminished.
Because of the complexity and magnitude of recovery efforts in St. Bernard
Parish, the near-term fate of the parish shelter and shelter operations
remains in question. The general consensus among parish officials seems to
be that until St. Bernard is more fully habitable, shelter operations will
not be an essential need in the parish. Trog explained that the time frame
for this recovery period is not yet clear to parish officials.
Immediate needs:
* Trog will soon resign her post as animal control director, and an interim
director should be named as soon as possible to help coordinate the recovery
of parish shelter operations.
* Prior to the hurricane, the parish had considered plans for building a new
shelter. A site selection and building committee should be formed as soon as
possible to finalize site selection and building plans so that existing
Katrina funds could be set aside for subsidizing construction costs for the
parish.
Long-term needs:
* Affordable, high-volume spay/neuter services for low-income family pets,
with the goal of achieving zero euthanasia for healthy and treatable pets
* Access to affordable general veterinary care for low-income family pets to
reduce general, treatable ailments such as mange, heartworm and fleas
* A new shelter facility, sufficient to meet the pre-hurricane needs of the parish
Orleans Parish, Louisiana
Summary:
Because there has been considerable misinformation about the status of
rescue efforts in Orleans Parish, we conducted a dual assessment in this
parish:
a) Best Friends staffers interviewed local veterinarians, local rescue
agencies, and volunteer animal rescuers who have been in the area a month or
more.
b) Best Friends also participated in a multi-agency assessment, coordinated
by the Orleans Parish animal control agency, the Louisiana SPCA (LSPCA).
The extrapolated results of the LSPCA assessment indicated that
approximately 100,000 animals currently remain to be rescued in Orleans
Parish. Though local rescue agencies and volunteer rescuers generally agreed
that the LSPCA assessment was inaccurate and inconclusive, all did generally
agree that indeed thousands of displaced pets remain on the streets awaiting
rescue.
Local rescue agencies revealed that a sustained city-wide food and water
program, initiated early on by volunteer rescuers, is the primary cause for
such a high survival rate. However, interviews with local veterinarians
confirmed that animal health issues, including end-stage starvation and
related complications, remain a critical concern.
Immediate needs:
* Volunteer rescuers and rescue support personnel sufficient to support
current rescue needs
* A short-term holding facility to improve current shelter capacity and
administer veterinary and general health triage
* Subsidized veterinary support and support personnel for short-term triage
* Transport vehicles to move animals from triage to placement outside the
rescue area as part of a national adoption campaign
Long-term needs:
* Affordable, high-volume spay/neuter services for low-income family pets,
with the goal of achieving zero euthanasia for healthy and treatable pets
* Access to affordable general veterinary care for low-income family pets to
reduce general, treatable ailments such as mange, heartworm and fleas
Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana
Summary:
Best Friends staffers interviewed parish health department manager Raymond
Ferrer and volunteers Patsy Hebert and Ronnie Marjerison.
Under Ferrer’s authority, Hebert and Marjerison have been managing the
parish emergency shelter operation since the second week after the
hurricane. Local veterinarian Dr. Hebert has provided ongoing veterinary
support.
The emergency shelter operation is stable and well organized, and animals
seem to be maintained in good health. Ongoing rescue operations are
maintained by volunteers and the four ACOs, and are sufficient for the need
in upper Plaquemines Parish.
However, in lower Plaquemines Parish (the southern half of the parish),
which sustained considerable damage from the hurricane, officials are not
yet clear on the status and health of displaced animals there.
The building and grounds that have been used for emergency sheltering to
date will very soon be returned to normal occupancy, and the remaining
animals will need to be relocated. Best Friends has offered to help the
health department with relocation efforts as needed.
Plaquemines Parish maintains four animal control officers and a rabies
control facility. Just prior to the hurricane, parish officials had been
reviewing the need for a new, modern shelter operation.
Immediate needs:
* Transport vehicles to move animals from triage to placement outside the
rescue area as part of a national adoption campaign
* Maintain current rescue and triage operations
* Maintain current level of veterinary support
* Deploy rescue teams to lower Plaquemines Parish
Long-term needs:
* Affordable, high-volume spay/neuter services for low-income family pets,
with the goal of achieving zero euthanasia for healthy and treatable pets
* Access to affordable general veterinary care for low-income family pets to
reduce general, treatable ailments such as mange, heartworm and fleas
* A new, modern shelter facility with public adoption area and sufficient
space for animals and staff
Jefferson Parish, Louisiana
Summary:
Since the first days after the storm, Best Friends has supported the
recovery efforts of Jefferson Parish Animal Control. Director Bert Smith
continues to make sustained progress in managing recovery of the largest
animal control district in greater New Orleans. The week prior to our
assessment, the shelter had hosted an off-site adoption event, and Smith
reported that all animals were adopted, and that there were more people
wanting to adopt than there were animals available.
Smith explained that parish operations have nearly fully recovered, and the
shelters are back to fairly routine operation.
Smith feels that the agencies across the disaster area should strive for
more than just a return to normal operation, and that the disaster should
now be considered an opportunity to make significant gains in reducing pet
overpopulation.
Immediate and long-term needs:
* Affordable, high-volume spay/neuter services for low-income family pets,
with the goal of achieving zero euthanasia for healthy and treatable pets
* Access to affordable general veterinary care for low-income family pets to
reduce general, treatable ailments such as mange, heartworm and fleas
Other Louisiana Parishes
We plan to continue assessing the disaster region, and will include other
Louisiana parishes in our next report.
Conclusions
Volunteer help: There are immediate and urgent needs to increase volunteer
efforts and subsidized vet care in Harrison County, Mississippi, and Orleans
Parish, Louisiana, to rescue the estimated thousands of remaining displaced
pets. These volunteer efforts should be coordinated through local shelters
and/or local rescue agencies.
Adoption support: We propose a national adoption and foster campaign,
managed and supported jointly by the major humane organizations, to place
all animals rescued and as yet unclaimed by their families.
Funding support: Many agencies expressed frustration that while they have
continued rescue and recovery efforts, they have not had the time to raise
adequate funds for the work that remains. They ask that any remaining funds
raised to-date to help the victims of Katrina be fully invested in the
ongoing rescue operations and eventual rebuilding efforts.
Building for the future: We agree with Jefferson Parish ACO Bert Smith that
“the disaster should now be considered an opportunity to make significant
gains in reducing pet overpopulation.”
And we are inspired by Mayor Nagin’s plan to rebuild a better New Orleans.
We can work together to “build it back better” throughout the region for the
animals, too.
Funds raised and not yet spent: We estimate that more than 50 million
dollars have been donated to the major national humane organizations
specifically to help the animals of the Gulf Coast region, and that tens of
millions of those dollars still remain unspent.
We urge that these funds be directed toward:
* the immediate needs of the animals and organizations caring for them
* the long-term needs of rebuilding animal care for the region
Proposals for long-term rebuilding
We propose that the longer term plan, to be funded by the national humane
organizations, include:
* Low-cost, high-volume spay/neuter facilities
* Neighborhood sheltering and adoption capabilities
* Affordable and accessible health care for pets of low-income families
* Model legislation to bring a complete end to dog fighting and related
animal abuse, along with education programs to address the causes of animal
abuse and pet overpopulation
================================================================
BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SOCIETY PRESS RELEASE
Contact for more information:
Barbara Williamson
435-644-2001, ext. 252, 435-689-0200 (cell) or barbara@bestfriends.org
Elissa Jones
435-644-3965, ext. 4289 or elissa@bestfriends.org
HURRICANE KATRINA:
Campaign urges national animal organizations to spend the millions raised to
help family pets, as intended Thousands of needy pets awaiting rescue still
roam New Orleans and the Gulf Coast
KANAB, UT (11/23/05) - Three months after Hurricane Katrina, thousands of
homeless pets still cling to life on the streets, waiting to be rescued,
according to an assessment revealed by Best Friends Animal Society today.
The organization, which runs the nation's largest companion animal
sanctuary, is launching a petition drive on behalf of these pets and their
displaced families.
"Compassionate citizens have already given their money to this cause. Now
we're asking them to give their voices, too, by signing a petition to ensure
that these dogs and cats in the Gulf Coast region are not abandoned and that
donated money be spent for what it was intended," said Paul Berry, Best
Friends' director of operations.
Most national organizations suspended rescue operations over a month ago.
But three months after the hurricane, independent rescuers report that
thousands of displaced pets, belonging to people who have lost their homes,
are still clinging to life, and that their situation is critical. Many of
these pets are in destroyed and abandoned areas where food sources such as
garbage cans are not available, and many of the structures these pets are
using for shelter will soon be bulldozed.
"We've been working on the frontlines of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts
since late August, and have not given up," said Berry. "Our emergency rescue
shelter outside of New Orleans still has up to 600 animals on any given day
and brings in up to 40 animals a day from volunteer rescuers who continue to
work in the field."
Berry said the Best Friends assessment, which was conducted last week, has
confirmed some urgent and disturbing facts about the ongoing need for rescue
efforts. The report (www.bestfriends.org) cites interviews with local animal
control officials, veterinarians, rescue agencies, and volunteers across the
region.
"People all over the country donated tens of millions of dollars to rescue
these animals," said Berry. "All it takes now is a commitment from the
animal welfare organizations to finish the job they undertook."
That commitment includes:
* Providing volunteers to continue rescuing displaced pets still alive on
the streets, encouraging volunteers to continue rescuing pets still alive on
the streets, and providing staging areas to get them to safety
* Conducting a national adoption drive for all pets not reclaimed by their families
"Working together, we can do better than simply allowing these pets who have
clung to life for so long to become the next generation of strays who will
reproduce and ultimately be euthanized," said Berry.
Best Friends is asking everyone who donated money to the rescue effort to
sign a petition urging national animal welfare organizations to continue the
rescue work as long as these traumatized family pets are still alive.
"We are inspired by Mayor Nagin's plan to rebuild a better New Orleans,"
said Berry, who is a native New Orleanian. "If funds remain after the rescue
efforts are complete, they should be used to build a better New Orleans for
companion animals. Once the remaining pets are safe, we can join together to
invest in programs that will radically improve the quality of life for
animals in the Gulf Coast region."
These programs would include:
* Low-cost, high-volume spay/neuter facilities
* Neighborhood no-kill sheltering and adoption capabilities
* Affordable health care for pets of low-income families
* Model legislation to end dog fighting and related animal abuse
"This was an unprecedented tragedy for people and their pets," said Berry.
"But for local humane groups, once the rescue efforts are complete it can
now be a unique opportunity to create a new reality for companion animals.
"So many people have given their time, effort, and money to the cause. Now
they all need to add their voice to how the remaining money should be spent.
That's why we're launching a petition drive to support this vision for the
animals."
For a copy of the report and to join the petition drive, please go to
http://www.bestfriends.org.
###
About Best Friends Animal Society
Best Friends Animal Society is working with shelters and rescue groups
nationwide to bring about a time when there will be no more homeless pets.
Best Friends operates the nation's largest sanctuary for homeless animals,
provides adoption, spay/neuter, and educational programs, and publishes Best
Friends, the nation's largest general-interest animal magazine.
"A better world through kindness to animals"
Respectfully yours,
Debra Barlow
President &
Animal Cruelty Investigator
P.O. Box 17763
Shreveport, La 71138
www.hopefulhaven.com
Phone numbers:
318-925-4272 home
318-797-6043 fax
318-286-3116 cell
318-7977464 work mon-thur 8-4 fri 8-1
"If ever a horse needs a helping hand, Please God, Let it be ours""
Dear Members & Friends,
Best Friends is asking all the national humane organizations who were involved
in hurricane relief efforts to join with us in completing the rescue work that
still needs to be done.
And we're asking you, our members and friends, to sign a petition about this
on our website at http://www.bestfriends.org.
As you know, Best Friends is still bringing dozens of displaced pets out of
New Orleans every day. Although the official center at Gonzales has been
closed since early October, people are still rescuing dogs and cats all the
time, and we continue to bring as many as possible to the Best Friends relief
center - and from there to foster groups around the country.
Last week, a team of Best Friends staff members, led by our director of ops,
Paul Berry, toured the key counties and parishes in the region to do a formal
assessment of the situation. You can read Paul's report on the website.
There is clearly a lot of work yet to be done: thousands of animals yet to be
rescued and placed in foster/adoption homes, and much help needed in
rebuilding devastated shelters and local programs.
YOU GAVE THE ANIMALS YOUR MONEY. NOW GIVE THEM YOUR VOICE
We've launched a petition drive on the Best Friends website for the thousands
of pets who are still displaced.
Tens of millions of dollars were donated toward the rescue effort, much of
which is still available to complete the work that still needs to be done.
Your voice will help bring the funds and the people back to New Orleans and
the Mississippi coast so that we can get pets out to foster homes and then
launch a national adoption campaign.
Between all of the national humane organizations, we can get this job done.
But time is running out. Starving, sick dogs and cats are still roaming the
streets.
On her blog on the Best Friends website, journalist Cathy Scott notes that
cats are sitting on the sidewalks, and dogs are hiding under houses.
"Hundreds and thousands throughout New Orleans are still out there and need to
be rescued," she writes. "I spoke with two National Guard officers yesterday
and they said the same thing: The animals need help, otherwise they will
starve to death on the streets or get hit by cars as they migrate where the
food and water sources are."
You can reach the petition from the Best Friends home page at
http://www.bestfriends.org. Please add your name to it, and encourage friends
and family to do the same. You can also read our full report and the press
release we sent out early this morning.
We wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving. And we can all give thanks that so much
help, support, and love has gone into the work of rescuing homeless pets this
year. Let's join together to complete the work on the Gulf Coast region.
Thank you, as always, for caring.
Michael Mountain
Best Friends
Another Job Left Undone By the Big Groups who took in millions and Millions. Please email this report to the large groups and even Noahs Wish who took in $5,000,000. Surely they can set up a small operation in Biloxi. Eric Rice
Biloxi Update
by TripleRPets, 11/24/05 9:29 ET
Greetings from Biloxi! As I leave today after six days down here, I thought I'd pass along the current situation and needs. This area was hit extrememly hard hit by Katrina, in fact the entire coast of Mississippi has been affected. The reality is that there are no pet rescue groups here. We need volunteers to keep feeding and watering the animals on the street. Just in East Biloxi alone (where we have been focsing our efforts), there are literally hundreds of animals on the street. We are starting to see litters of puppies and kittens as well. There are very few spots available at shelters to take the animals to and the residents are now "taking in" the animals. Meaning they are helping us to feed and care for the animals, so in many cases, they do not want to see the animal picked up. However, there are sick, injured or pregnant animals that do need care. There are no vets or techs here to help. We are paying for vet care out of our own pockets.
I will post more information and more pictures on our web site, with more detailed descriptions than what is there now, next week. Web site iswww.triplerpets.org.
In the meantime, how can you help?? 1. Work with Tara High at HSSM (228-863-4394) and Barbara McKenzie at Jackson County Animal Shelter(qtrmoon1@cableone.net) to transport animals to no-kill shelters throughout the country. This opens spots to place animals from the affected areas. If you only have a weekend, how about driving here and transporting animals back to your local 501c3 no-kill shelters? In that drive, you can save many animals lives!
2. If you have time to spend on site, come down and help with feeding and watering. We can hit more areas if we have more cars and people.
3. Help deliver supplies to other affected areas. We are the group that took food to Gail over in Pascagoula. I'm sure there are many more "Gails" out there that need our assistance. Pass along information to us, and we can arrange some food drops.
3. Consider a donation. This allows us to continue our efforts and help more animals and deliver more supplies. If you know of someone with a cargo van, can you or we borrow it to make a transport run? It currently costs us $300 per week (plus gas) to rent a cargo van.
4. Spread the word that there is still a need for volunteers! Help us to recruit some folks who want to HELP.
You should also know that the people of Biloxi are wonderful! Their spirit and outlook is unbelievable in spite of the situation they are still in, twelve weeks after the hurricane. We are as much helping them, as the animals. We distribute clothing, shoes, blankets, water, ice and a hug whenever needed!
Today is our day to give thanks and I would like thank all of you for supporting pet rescue throughout the region!
Judy ClarkTriple R Pets228-238-2465www.triplerpets.orgjudy@triplerpets.org
WTF? Buster's fate??
by ParrotHead, 11/23/05 23:30 ET
Crossposted from CateBB on PF
CARE does it again. I have never in my life seen a more unethical, immoral senseless group of people pretending to work for animal welfare. For those of you reading for the first time, Buster, a Katrina survivor bit Leslie Rockey the CARE shelter director when she approached him improperly. She immediately demanded he be euthanized. Sue Schmidt his rescuer fought that decision and the fur has been flying since. When the public outcry got too loud CARE said they would consider sending him to a sanctuary. So a group of us here on petfinder lobbied several. Only CARE never contacted them. When the sanctuaries contacted CARE they were rebuffed. So again a group of us here on petfinder worked tirelessly to find his owners, a near impossible feat as the rescue paperwork had the wrong address. We found them and they were/are overjoyed and grateful. Only now CARE held a cute little press conference where they trotted out the local sheriff to inform one and all he still gets to decide whether Buster lives or dies. He might declare Buster a threat and still have him euthanized. He made a great show announcing he has that authority. Well get the dog out of Colorado, you say? We'd love to. We found his family a week and a half ago. They have informed CARE to release him to Sue and she will get him back to the family after helping him readjust. (Buster was on the streets for three weeks, crated at Lamar Dixon for three weeks, had a week off and has been in isolation since; he's more traumatized now than when this started.) Now a CARE representative has implied that the family will need notarized proof of ownership before they release him. Did they require that of other reunited families? I have never seen such pettiness. The point of sheltering the pet victims of Katrina was to provide care until they could be reunited, not to prove you can kill them. This has become a pissing contest for this so called animal-rescue. Something else I haven't really announced before but find so morally reprehensible is that a former Lamar Dixon volunteer really wanted to foster a dog CARE had custody of. Since she was a friend of Sues they kept refusing and hassling this woman. They had previously agreed to the foster but then decided they wouldn't release the vet paperwork. This woman lives in San Diego. Rather than just having the dog flown to her, she flew up to Colorado so the dog could fly back with her and not be as traumatized. Well CARE kept refusing on the vet paperwork they suddenly agreed. This was two Fridays ago; the day the woman arrived in Colorado. Why did CARE suddenly change their mind? I am sure it had nothing to do with the fact that the owner of that dog called them that morning. He identified his dog. [b]THEN[/b] CARE released the dog to the foster family, waited 4 days then told them they would have to put her back on an airplane. And the suckiest part? CARE had the owners name and address the whole frickin time. All they had to was get on the Internet for a phone number. They never bothered. They toy with people; they broke this foster mom's heart. They caused this dog unnecessary stress.
God, I think I hate this organization.
Don't donate to Noah's Wish!
Noah's Wish refuses to place animals on Petfinder.com, their owners may never find them.
Noah's Wish has sent numerous Feline Leukemia positive cats out for adoption...exposing healthy cats already in good homes to this deadly disease. With all of the money they've raked in, they could certainly afford FeLV snap tests!
Terri Crisp ought to be ashamed of herself (again)
Should your community ever have an animal disaster and Noah's wish should show up (they will)...escort Terri Crisp to the state line!
In reference to Buster's story, who is CARE? Where are they located? Were they physically in Louisiana doing rescue? Do they have a website? I am not at all familiar with this group but I sure want to be able to remember their attitude about Buster.
What people had to go through to keep pets. Thanks for people who know what pets mean to people...but IT SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BE THIS HARD TO KEEP YOUR PET WITH YOU!!!!! Eric Rice
Local priest helps people and their pets find refuge after the storms
By LAURA McKNIGHT
The Courier
The Rev. Jim Morrison and his dog, Blue, in the chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas church on Nicholls State University’s campus. The church served as a shelter for several hundred hurricane victims and their pets after Morrison realized that other shelters had banned the animals. (MATT STAMEY/THE COURIER)
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THIBODAUX -- In the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina, the Rev. Jim Morrison strolled the Nicholls State University campus looking for a way to help the thousands New Orleans evacuees who sought sanctuary there. Morrison’s walk led to an unplanned effort that helped more than 130 people hang on to the pets they had risked their own safety to keep.
Soon after the storm, the animated priest, himself a dog owner, stumbled across a group of evacuees sitting outside the Nicholls State shelter, despair and grief etched on their faces. Hot and tired, the evacuees couldn’t stay at the shelter with their pets but wouldn’t go without them.
"The only natural thing to say was just, ëCome to St. Thomas,’ " said Morrison, a Houma native who has been pastor at the St. Thomas Aquinas church on Nicholls State’s campus for three years.
"It just needed to be done," he said, "It’s the only thing you could do."
The pet owners clung to their animals, Morrison said, after arguing and fighting to keep them, some refusing offers to escape a flooded New Orleans without their pets.
A man in a wheelchair told Morrison he remained stranded on Interstate 10 for hours, waving off hordes of buses that wouldn’t let him board with his Rottweiler. Another stayed on his roof, refusing to accept a helicopter ride to safety without his pet.
After battling to get their pets on buses, boats, helicopters, they arrived at the Thibodaux shelter only to be told again that their pets weren’t allowed. Morrison opened the church as a shelter, and Nicholls volunteers began directing evacuees with pets to the Aquinas center.
By nightfall, 130 people and 150 animals had spread across the church building, which had no air conditioning and was illuminated by candlelight.
"We had no idea how big this was going to get," he said.
The priest said he worried he might have bit off more than he could chew when he noticed a pot-bellied pig relaxing on the altar.
Despite the numbers, the center was quiet the first night, Morrison said, overcome by a "hush of despair and exhaustion."
"Everyone was exhausted, beasts and people," he said.
With almost no kennels, Rottweilers shared space with Chihuahuas, cats, birds and even a rabbit, but there were no fights or attacks, only peacefulness, said Morrison.
"It was almost like being in Noah’s Ark," he said. "It seems so unreal now."
The university, church members and surrounding community welcomed the idea of sheltering people and pets at the center, Morrison said. Though no more than 130 people stayed in the building at any one time, more than 250 people passed through, he said.
"It brought a lot of joy to our church," he said.
The animals brought people together, as those from upscale New Orleans subdivisions and public-housing projects discussed their pets. Local elderly visited the center to see the creatures, and area children bathed and walked them.
The crisis removed barriers between races, religions and economic status, he said.
"All of a sudden, they all became one in our place," Morrison said.
The broken barriers extended into the local community, he said.
"There’s a unity we’ve never seen before in our land," Morrison told members of the South Central Industrial Association during a recent meeting. "There’s been a sense of real dignity and appreciation as the community has responded."
As word of the shelter and its work spread, local pet stores, veterinarians and animal lovers flocked to the Aquinas center with portable kennels, food, supplies and medical services.
"If you get caught in a hurricane, start barking or meowing," Morrison joked. "People love animals."
Once newspaper accounts of the shelter went national, people across the country began sending donations and letters of encouragement, some signed by their pets, Morrison said.
Though the priest said he enjoys pets, Morrison said the main reason he offered the church as a shelter was to help their owners.
Volunteers at the center worked to help evacuees find family, serve food and offer medical care.
Meanwhile, Blue, Morrison’s own yellow Labrador retriever, remained in "exile" at a friend’s home, so Morrison could tend to his guests.
Despite the lack of dogfights or animal attacks, Morrison said sheltering animals had challenges and memorable moments. The lawn near the church looked like a farmyard, Morrison said, and his sermons were regularly accented with barking. The church nearly became the only one with a "barking room" instead of a "cry room," Morrison joked. A lot of churches have rooms set aside where parents can listen to the sermon without having a fidgeting child disturb services.
Another challenge came when Hurricane Rita charged toward the Gulf Coast, forcing the 30 evacuees then at the church to evacuate to a larger shelter and leave their pets behind.
"We had a little zoo," he said, with a Nicholls student playing zookeeper. "That was a pretty interesting time."
The pets also left behind some damaged carpets and furniture and fleas, which Morrison said has been the hardest part of the effort. Morrison said until now, he had no idea how difficult fleas are to remove.
But it was worth it.
"It was our part," he said. "That’s what the church is built for, to care for people."
People and animals remained at the shelter through Oct. 6, Morrison said. Volunteers worked feverishly to connect remaining evacuees with family members or find local housing.
The priest said leaders need to learn from the experience and create better options for evacuees with pets, so they aren’t forced to choose between their animal friends and their own safety.
"You really put people in dilemmas," he said. "I think that’s why a lot of people didn’t evacuate."
PLEASE HELP This family find these Pets. Rescuers please email to all other rescuers. Someone picked these guys up!!!!
My name is Ned Gonzales and my wife's name is Julie. We reside at 125 22nd street, New Orleans, LA, in the Lakeview area near the 17th street canal. 22nd street is between Pontchartrain Blvd and Fleur de lis and a block south of Harrison Ave. We have lost everything since Katrina including Nemo and Lucky our pets. They are like our kids. We are so depressed and dying inside without them in our lives. Nemo and Lucky slept in bed with my wife and I. So now, there is no sleeping without the warmth of them snuggling next to us. The loss of our home means nothing compared to the loss of Nemo and Lucky. I'm a New Orleans Police Officer and Nemo and Lucky would try to stop me from leaving them in the the mornings by standing and blocking the door and when I returned in the evenings they would tackle me with such excitement as if they thought I was gone for years. I miss them so much so much, that I have had to take extended leave from work. We have trouble sleeping because we are constantly on the Internet searching every website available on Katrina rescued dogs. We are scared to stop looking because the next page may have our Lucky and Nemo on it. We strongly believe that our buddies were rescued from our home, because the front door appeared to have been forced open with a crowbar. The lock was completely pushed out of the door and the door was kicked in. We found Nemo's flea collar which was broken off and lying on our bedroom floor, like someone had been wrestling with him and in the struggle his flea collar was broken off. In looking at this we believe that Nemo put up a fight because he did not want to leave his home. Our house had about 3 feet of water and it appeared that our sofa had floated upside down and there was
pawprints and fecal matter on the sofa, where we believe they were living.
We called LSU and the Humane Society and gave them permission to use any means to gain entry to rescue our dogs. These calls were made a few days after the storm. We believe in our hearts that they were rescued. We have spoken to a hundred different people and written just as many emails with no success. Please we need help finding them. We also contacted the CATF-2 the human rescue unit who informed us that they did not force our door on 9-11 when they were in the area.
Nemo is going to be 2 yrs. old on 12/1/05. He is a German shepherd/chow mix. He weighs about 45 pounds and is black and tan in color. The tan is on his face and mixes with the black on his head and shoulder area, his stomach is tan and brown. He has purple spots on his tongue and he has an overbite. He looks almost like a full breed shepherd. Nemo is very scary and shy with people. He is my best friend and I' m dying without him. Please Help!
Lucky is a wirehair jack russell terrier. She is tri-colored, white and brown colors on her face with black on her ears, her body is white with black spots. Her hair is long and wirey looking. She is about 12 - 15 pounds and is spayed. Lucky is very aggressive and will
bite if you wake her up. She just made 4 yrs. old in October. Lucky was also wearing a white flea collar. Lucky is my 16-year-old daughter's pet and she is so heartbroken over this. Lucky is my heart and I miss her so much. Please Help!
Lucky and Nemo are a huge part of our lives. We will do anything to be reunited with them. We are dying inside without them. Please, if anyone can help us find our pets or if anyone remembers rescuing our pets Please contact us anytime day or night at 504 432-7141 or e-mail us at julie761959@msn.com Thanking you in advance,
CARE = Colorado Animal Rescue out of Glenwood Springs, CO.
Unfortunately too many times the rescue shelters become only as good as the directors who run them... In this case = DEFINITELY TIME FOR A NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AT CARE!!
One has to wonder if she even ANY training or even the most "basic" experience with animals when she was hired?! Wow, you don't directly approach an animal (especially one that is unfamilar with you and Katrina traumatized to boot), wearing sunglasses and grab for his mouth ~to inspect his teeth~ YIKES... is there any question as to why he bit her?!
If Buster is NOT returned to his owners, the outrage of the entire national animal loving community will be camped on CAREs doorstep for sure.
In regards to NOAH'S WISH there were 49 "OWNED" CATS FROM LAMAR-DIXON that they took in at the request of the HSUS (per NW website 9/18). What happened to these cats? Were they "supposedly" owner surrendered... or requested to be fostered (no indication)... What is the ENTIRE STORY since they keep insisting that they didn't have ANY pets from NO?! Also can we assume that HSUS even remembers where these 49 cats were sent?! Hardly!! AND since Noah's Wish chose not to post on Petfinders we are left wondering if ALL 49 cats were reunited with their owners??
Posters, ads, certified letters netted Noah's Wish between 50-65% pets reunited with their owners from Slidell, which is very good given the depressingly dismal numbers out of Lamar-Dixon. HOWEVER MAYBE if they would have posted on Petfinders/Petharbor they could have had EVEN better results. Guess we will never know how many more sweet babies could have found their way back to their own loving families?!
Closing on a happier note: MERCEDES the black pit bull who somehow managed to survive the SBP shootings was reunited with his family.
AND truly amazing LUCA a black SharPei who had been lost since April (even before Katrina hit) was saved AND reunited with his NO family thanks to the heroic efforts of all the grassroots rescuers who cared enough to not give up. Thank You Everyone.
Hey Eric
What about MS. Things are in god awful shape over there. How can we help to get the state of things noticed? Would it be time well spent for those of us going down to help Jane to go over there at night, say to BF?
Thanks!
Written by Jeannette Ferro
"All the news is about New Orleans. I have a love/hate relation with New Orleans. I grew up there. I'm almost 60 now. But New Orleans, with all it's destruction, actually faired better than most communities. Granted, New Orleans was heavier populated, but we can't overlook the many other areas simply because no one has heard of them and because they're not tourist attractions. The other people count, too.
As a nurse and an animal rescuer, having cared for and knowing so many of these people and animals, I have been trying to do everything I can for both humans and nonhumans since Katrina hit. I will live with stories that will haunt me until the day I die. One of the most recent that has come to my attention is also one of the worst.
The coastal areas of Louisiana, in Vermilion Parish, are/were inhabited with generations of Acadian/Cajun people. This is where the dying language of Cajun French is spoken. The majority of the population are animal and crop farmers. Being closer to the Gulf, the tides and storm surges completely wiped out most of everything that was there. Crops were destroyed. Large herds of cattle, horses, pigs, and every other living animal known to those areas were either swept out into the Gulf, or were left stranded on tiny islands of slightly higher ground. The very most southern part, below HWY 82, looks like it was never inhabited by any living beings. Wells that provided water are now ruined from the salty Gulf and ocean waters. The land is a white/grayish color, completely dead, and rendered totally useless by the salt water. Animals who weren't washed out into the Gulf, and who have tried to survive on the remaining salt saturated water and grass, have either died from dehydration from the salt or are now very sick. These people are begging for the basic needs for themselves, but are also desperately asking for the basic needs to try and keep their animals alive as well.
Many of the people who lived in the area would not leave their family homesteads, homesteads that have been passed down from several generations before them. They wouldn't leave their animals or their crops as these were their only means of survival, because of the love of their animals (not all are raised to be slaughtered), and because their homes represent generations of their families and culture.
Two days ago, I heard about an animal rescuer in one such little town called Abbeville. Near Abbeville is another small, and just as unknown town called Erath. I'm told there is an estimated 3,000 people there, many now living in tents, without power and water, and who have not had any relief from FEMA and little to none from the Red Cross. The news that upset me so badly, coming from a fellow animal rescuer, is the fact that many of these people are actually coming to this animal rescuer asking for water and blankets that have been donated for the animals. As an avid animal lover and nurse, I can't begin to explain to you how upsetting this is to me. What kind of society lets it's own people go without the most basic needs to cause them to have to beg for water and blankets that were donated for animals?!?
The animal rescuer I learned about normally aids smaller domestic animals, but she's now forced to do what she can to provide water and blankets for humans, as well as hay and feed for all kinds of livestock. Fencing, like everything else, is now gone and badly needed. Vaccinations and medications are badly needed. I would bet that the majority of the people who might read this have never heard of any of this or even know there are places like Abbeville and Erath, Louisiana. I live in Louisiana and I've never seen or heard about any of this on our local news. How can that be? How can the governments and the news forget or overlook thousands of US citizens living in total despair?
just saw on the news that the big CEO of Pfister pharmaceutical company donated millions in dollars and medications to earthquake victims in another country, and was quoted as saying something to the effect that it was an opportunity for him to give back to those who had nothing. Hello! What about thousands of Americans from Texas to Alabama who now have nothing?!?
Thousands of families who are trying their best to get back on their feet and rebuild or go on with their lives elsewhere are in limbo thanks to the federal government. FEMA is out of money until the federal government refills their bank account so FEMA can pay the millions of people who have paid for flood insurance protection for years. The federal government is holding up funding FEMA because they are to involved in arguing on the rights to drill for damnable oil in the protected Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and won't pass the budget bill without the provision allowing them those drilling rights. That should tell you a LOT about the priorities and the alliances of our federal government! Where is the aid from these rich and powerful oil companies that we recently heard about making record breaking third quarter profits for 2005, and that are responsible for destroying the marshes and wetlands that used to protect all of our Gulf coast states? Those marshes and wetlands, had they not been destroyed by oil drilling, would have prevented most of the destruction and would have saved many of the thousands of lives taken by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and hurricanes yet to come.
Americans have been hit and hit as hard as any people could be hit by the worst disaster in the history of our nation, and federal aid is no where to be found. Just as bad, there is no public outcry because there has been no news coverage about these people.
How can this happen in the largest, richest, most powerful country..... or was.....in the world?
The funny thing about this situation is you don't have to dig far or do much investigation for the truth to stare you right in the face.
1) trackiny system sucks
2) Big groups took money and ran
3) Grassroots saved just as many animals with 1/10000 of the money
4) LASPCA nonexistent for 2 months after storm - now wants it all back.
5) State Vet doesn't understand situation in any Parish. Makes comments about flying over pastures and them being ok. How about a car ride asshole.
6) After the biggest disaster x100 in American history it takes more than 30 days to get BACK to normal
7) Any state not willing to accept FREE help and FREE money deserves to be sold back to the FRENCH.
8) Animals have feelings. Just look at the picturs.
9) Neither State Govt Nor Federal Govt is doing what should be done in far out Parishes for people or animals. Grassroots do it again.
10) Dogs and Cats are much friendlier than most people (maybe even smarter than some I have met)
11) Someone should go to jail for those levees. But they won't. But of course they are going to put that 65 year old couple that ran the nursing home in jail in St. Bernard.
Eric Rice
And the whopper: #12. People should be evacuated with Pets. And the reality it isn't that hard to do.
Eric
Please read "Prissy's" story below her description
Prissy is a Shih tzu/ Poodle mix
2 1/2 yrs old - 13lbs.
Charcoal - with light legs and paws
She has a charcoal face with a few lights strands
on her muzzle.
Charcoal body, chest and tail
Prissy is spayed
Markings
Surgery Scar -Right Hind leg (knee surgery)
Underbite
Patch of solid black hair near left hip (round, silver dollar size)
More noticable when her hair is short.
Last seen at Poydras Junction in St Bernard, La 70085
(Field like area, near the Mississippi River levee.
Not far from the Violet canal)
She has an AVID MicroChip # (will be provided to rescue shelter)
All AVID information has been updated.
vacinations current.
"Prissy's story"
"Hurricane Katrina had passed through Louisiana.
But, all was not safe.
I don't have a picture of Prissy. William Gonsoulin
(my brother) is her owner.
William and Judy left St Bernard with the clothes on their backs.
They lost everything after Hurricane Katrina had passed.
It may surprise you. Hurricane winds were not the cause of their loss.
The canal levee system gave in to the force of the rising water.
As the water rose rapidly, William and Judy moved to higher ground.
They took Prissy with them as they traveled.
At one point they broke into a 2 story house.
The water stopped rising. There was food in the
house that they had broken into. They would have been uncomfortable
without electricity. But, they could have survived. Looters were
moving into the area, by boat. St Bernard became a very dangerous place.
In the darkness, looter's flashlights could be seen. Their voices pierced
the silent night as they broke into houses.
William, Judy and Prissy were rescued from the 2 story house
by a resident, with a boat. They were taken to the Mississippi levee.
They were told that a river barge was coming to take them to a safe place.
William was told (by the police) that he had to leave Prissy there.
"He could not bring her on the barge that was coming for them.
And no pets would be allowed on evacuee buses".
William put Prissy down. She ran under a (parked) black truck.
It is my understanding that there were other animals there.
Probably because the area was dry.
Also, there was a man there. He told William that he would stay as
long as possible. Unfortunately, that gentleman had to leave because it was
getting more dangerous. My brother had exchanged phone numbers with
the man. Can you imagine how my brother felt? When he boarded the
evacuee bus, EVERYONE HAD THEIR PETS WITH THEM.
William could not go back for Prissy. She was on the other side
of the Mississippi river. It took a few days for William to reach the
man by phone. When William finally reached him the man said that
Prissy was okay when he left. She was freightened and would not come
from under the truck. He left food and water for Prissy. Prissy was left in
a field like setting near the Mississippi levee.
She was not in any immediate danger. She had food and water.
She wasn't in danger of being run over by passing cars.
There was no traffic on the streets.
It was several weeks before William Gonsoulin was allowed to enter
St Bernard, Louisiana.
By then, Prissy was gone.
The parish was secured by the police.
For weeks, only human and humane rescue teams were allowed into
St Bernard, La. I'm praying that Prissy was scooped up by a humane
rescue team or perhaps, a kind stranger.
Thank you for joining in the search for Prissy.
If you have any information please,
contact
William Gonsoulin
Former address 2105 Gina St St. Bernard, La 70085
Current (Temp) Address 8104 Harris Ave Harahan, La 70123
cell phone (504) 912-7193
land line (504) 738-5706
e-mails Beatcounter@cox.net (Linda Gonsoulin Comeaux)
(504) 454-2409
WGonsoulin3@cox.net (owner William Gonsoulin
My heart tells me Prissy is alive.
Until someone puts her lifeless body in my arms,
I will never give up my search for Prissy.
The material possessions that William and Judy lost are extensive.
Finding Prissy is more important.
Many thanks to all of you that are working so hard to re-unite owners and their pets.
There is a place being saved for you, in God's Kingdom.
With deep appreciation.
God bless!
Linda Comeaux
Metairie, La
top ten reasons animal rescue scenario a fiasco:
Numbers 1-9: stupid stupid stupid state vet.
Number 10: really stupid vet.
ALl pet searchers
Prissy looks like but is not PF32813
Kathryn
Prissy looks like but is not PF32813, which pic can be seen at http://disaster.petfinder.com/emergency/rescue/search.cgi?id=PF32813&idWildcards=all
She also is not any of the following:
PF32794
PF49834
PF46724
PF32375
PF36459
PF48200
PF35550
PF35335
PF56007
PF39009
How Dare Care Play Politics with a dog and emotionally torture another Katrina Family:
The fuss is about the politics of CARE shelter in Colorado who is refusing to give a Katrina Dog from NOLA back to his family because he bit the director of CARE who was a moron when she approached him. So now the night editor of the Aspen Daily News got involved and is
calling everyone (nationwide) who is TRYING TO FIND, SAVE, AND REUNITE Katrina pets "Dog-Lunatics"! Naturally we find this kind of behavior unaceptable and ~united~ have been able to WIN REUNIONS FOR OTHER KATRINA PETS in similar situations (being held hostage for various reasons.) So although you may not think we are actually working on a "case", sometimes it takes a WHOLE VILLAGE TO REUNITE ONE PET and we can ALL learn from these posts and continue to press Buster's case (AND the next) until they are ALL home again safe and sound with their rightful families.
So please be patient with our rants because almost everyone here IS working to find and reunite lost pets. (How would you feel if you found your pet and the Shelter refused to give "your baby" back?)
30854. Yes, that's what I don't get
by suzysmom, 11/26/05 4:06 ET
about the whole Buster situation?!
WHY NOT JUST LET BUSTER GO HOME TO HIS FAMILY? Case closed... Everyone happy?!
OK, there is always a possibility we are NOT getting the whole story, however Lynn Duane Burton's news article printed in the Aspen Daily News 11/23 was way-over-the-top as regards to IMHO actually TRYING TO STIR UP TROUBLE, FAN THE FLAMES and incite even more "fanatical response" (which made me wonder if the paper was perchance a supermarket tabloid... This article was supposedly written by not just a News Columnist, but now he claims to be the Night Editor as well?!)
There are a lot of unanswered questions. BUT PLEASE C.A.R.E. JUST LET BUSTER GO!
Buster STILL NOT HOME!
by suzysmom, 11/26/05 0:03 ET
CARE in Glenwood Springs, continues to hold Buster in isolation for weeks now, although the owner (an 81 yr old woman from NOLA) has been found. CARE STILL REFUSES TO RELEASE HIM! It's all a bunch of politics again between the ~Imbecile~ Director of CARE, whom he bit (and whom everyone here would have bitten too) and the lady who came to NO to help with the rescue efforts and brought Buster back to CO and was fostering him; without any problems until the CARE Director tried to grab his mouth to inspect his teeth... So she went running to the local Sheriff and now Buster is deemed a "vicious animal and a danger to the community" stating that their policy is to "NOT ADOPT OUT" dangerous dogs!! Which is an excuse to cover-up the Director of CAREs ineptitude BECAUSE BUSTER is NOT being considered for adoption, he is SUPPOSED TO BE RETURNED and reunited with his NOLA family who was found last week. Even worse the Sheriff of Garfield Co. says he has the right to have a "vicious animal" (BUSTER) EUTHANIZED!!!
And on and on it goes... Meanwhile poor little Buster waits all alone in isolation without any human love or kindness, not knowing why he is being punished and why he is being labeled a bad dog. For poor little Buster the suffering continues at the hands of CARE. WHY?!
Eric! You and Jane Garrison are in today's Chicago Tribune!!
link to source:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/
nationworld/chi-0511260094nov26,1,
1851072.story?coll=chi-newsnation
world-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
Animal rescuers, officials clash
In New Orleans, volunteers say they're saving hundreds while critics call the volunteers a nuisance
By Susan Berger
Special to the Chicago Tribune
Published November 26, 2005
When Jason Hurst heard that Hurricane Katrina might hit New Orleans, he took his service dog, Candy, to the park to leave her with "good memories."
When the quadriplegic evacuated his home in Pontchartrain Park, Hurst had to leave the 5-year-old black and silver Akita. He put her in a bathroom, filled the tub filled with water and left plenty of food.
Two months later, volunteer rescuers found a scared and emaciated Candy in an abandoned warehouse a few blocks from Hurst's house. It took a couple of days of luring her with food before she was captured.
Hurst, 30, who was paralyzed in a drive-by shooting when he was 18, had never been apart from Candy in five years even while attending college. When he and his dog were reunited, Candy was quiet at first but then jumped up to the wheelchair and into his arms and licked his face. She has not left his side since, he said.
One of Candy's rescuers was Jane Garrison, who came to New Orleans from Charleston, S.C., two weeks after the hurricane struck and ran the Humane Society of the United States operation there until it closed in October.
Garrison stayed. She and her crew crawl under houses and tear through flooring to find animals, many of which have become terrified of people. She says she has rescued 1,300 animals with her own hands. Her Web site, animalrescueneworleans.com, details her group's efforts. An estimated 8,000 animals have been rescued by hundreds of volunteers in the wake of Katrina, and rescue groups report tens of thousands more remain in Orleans Parish in need of help.
Volunteers face criticism
Despite stories that end happily like Hurst's, Garrison and other pet rescuers have been facing controversy of late.
Officials with the city of New Orleans and the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals dispute that there are thousands of animals on the street and say volunteer rescuers are well-meaning but overzealous, even breaking into homes to rescue animals.
"We are not in agreement with Jane's group," said Laura Maloney, executive director of Louisiana SPCA. "People who have worked in disasters say there is a psychological effect where some people have a hard time letting go."
Stephanie Ostrowski, a veterinarian with the U.S. Public Health Service who went to Louisiana to help close animal shelters in Gonzales and Baton Rouge, agrees.
Ostrowski said many volunteers confuse animals allowed to roam with lost animals in need. She said that "country people" might not "tie up their dogs while they're cleaning up the muck and mess."
"It's criminal," Garrison said. "The animals don't lie. If they want us to start taking the animals and unload them on their doorstep, we will."
Garrison said she stayed because she saw a real need to help lost pets and strays.
"Just because some state vet said [the Humane Society of the United States] had to leave--I was not a paid employee," said Garrison, who owns her own business. "I had the luxury of continuing to rescue. I felt thousands of animals drowned in the floodwaters. I was not going to let thousands more die in political red tape."
Eric Rice, 36, of Baltimore, went to New Orleans to help with the rescue and started ericsdogblog.com. In one week, Rice saw 553 animals trapped. He posted dozens of photos, stories and videos on his Web site. Among the videos is the dramatic rescue of a dog that had been trapped in a bathroom for 30 days.
Volunteer's estimates
There are seven volunteer groups, each bringing in about 700 animals a week, Garrison says. Her database has 3,000 locations where animals have been reported hiding under porches and homes.
"Seven hundred dogs? They are totally wrong," Ostrowski said.
"She [Garrison] is a lone voice. That there are thousands of traumatized and starving animals--we don't see that. We see piles of uneaten food and water not drunk."
Garrison said that in mid-November, she found three cats that had died recently, two next to empty food and water bowls.
Local authorities see some of the rescue effort as hysteria. Maloney says many volunteers are from out of town and do not understand that New Orleans always has had a stray animal problem. Before Katrina, the Louisiana SPCA estimated there were 26,000 strays on the streets, or 144 per square mile, she says.
In an effort to obtain a better grasp of the problem, the SPCA collaborated with major humane organizations and individual rescuers to assess the situation a week ago. For two days, 10 teams searched five areas for three hours in the morning and three hours at night.
The results, which Maloney acknowledges are not scientific, showed surprisingly few relatively healthy animals.
`Fundamentally flawed'
Michael Mountain, president of Best Friends Animal Society, whose agency participated in the assessment, said the study is "fundamentally flawed."
David Meyers, a volunteer rescuer from San Francisco, took part in the assessment's search, which found 120 dogs and 120 cats.
But Myers' team saw 70 dogs and 30 cats in just one shift.
"If you extrapolate the figures, you have to come to the conclusion there are tens of thousands of animals waiting to be rescued out there," Mountain said.
But although local officials like Maloney say there always has been a stray problem, many do not agree.
"Feral [stray] cats are savvy and very careful," Mountain said. "They won't step into a trap when people are around. We put up a trap and turn around and the cat has popped into the trap. Then they sit calmly on your shoulder. These are house cats."
An estimated 8,000 animals have been rescued and at least 1,200 reunited with their owners, according to Garrison. Many volunteers are concerned that some of the sheltered animals will be euthanized. Maloney said only "unadoptable" animals are euthanized.
In Mountain's view, the rescue operation is far from over.
"The major humane organizations need to be back down in the region," he said. "There are millions of dollars that have been donated and should be devoted to rescuing, saving and transporting [the animals] to foster or adoption homes."
Wayne Pacelle, chief executive officer of the Humane Society of the United States, said his organization received more than $20 million in donations and has been active in rescues and reunification.
Action on Capitol Hill
In September, Reps. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) introduced a bill so that in future disasters people and their pets or service animals will not be separated. The bill is expected to be debated in December, Mountain said.
And Mountain is calling for an independent, national investigation of the animal rescue operation, arguing that some people died because they refused to leave their pets in the wake of Katrina.
"Katrina is the defining moment in the history of including animals in disaster planning," Pacelle said. "We will look back at Katrina and say this is not how we should do it. We need to do a much better job."
Regarding the Chicago Tribune's column, it seems that LASPCA Director, Laura Maloney, thinks out-of-state rescuers are hysterical and don't know when to let go. I noticed, however, she thinks highly of the out-of-state U.S. Public Health Service veterinarian who agrees with her.
Don't you wonder about the wisdom of this USPHS vet when she made the remark there are a lot of strays because "country people might not tie up their dogs while they're cleaning up the muck and mess."? The metropolitan area of New Orleans contains approximately a million people and I seriously doubt that the city of New Orleans could ever be classified as "country" or "rural" - so what the hell is she talking about? She doesn't seem to have a clue about what is going on here.
I also find it interesting that Laura Maloney was quoted in this news article that "before Katrina, the LASPCA estimated there were 26,000 strays on the streets." Since the LASPCA gets well over a million dollars a year from the city of New Orleans to handle animal control, it would seem the LASPCA does a rotten, lousy job of collecting strays if she's aware that 26,000 were there before the hurricane. This million dollars does not include the donations received for the SPCA operation. So where is all this money going? Doesn't sound like it's being spent on animal control. Maybe an audit by an independent CPA is in order.
In my opinion, Laura Maloney and all her buddies with the federal and state governments need to get down on their knees and be thankful for the rescue groups that are still here doing the LASPCA's job without payment or even a thank-you. These so-called "officials" have done nothing but criticize, yet they sure can't handle the job.
Dr. Cindy,
Its insane that anyone would say no vets are needed. I have been to New Orleans 3 times.
Mrs. Littlefield has made it "a political thing to say" that we are all nuts and that the need has passed. This was the biggest animal disaster in the history of the world. How could anything be normal?
The politics of this makes me sick. All the groups on the ground are reputable with years of experience. Alley Cat Allies is leaving. They brought in 50 cats from a single trailer park the other day, without vets they can do nothing.
I trapped this chow with a half rotten face AND HE WAS WITH A PACK OF OVER 20 OTHER DOGS 10 BLOCKS FROM bOURBON sT. tHIS WAS LAST WEEKEND. Can be seen at www.ericsdogblog.com
Why is it that "people" like Mrs. Littlefield would not come visit a single rescue group? Captain Ostroski sang the same tune even though I offered to take her and show her example after example of sick and dying animals being brought in. Almost 75% of which are peoples pets and not strays from before the storm. Shame on these political desk jockeys who refused to get dirty to save a single animal yet were so quick to shut down hard working intelligent people who spent hundreds of thousands of our own money.
The politics and backstabbing is the shameful thing I have ever seen.
How can any argue with live animals caught in traps? Those numbers do not lie.
It is like saying Auschwitz didn't happen. But Nobody believes that because we have the documentation in pictures, videa and testimony, but here when I show Mrs. Littlefield pictures of animals and tell her we trapped 27 animals in one day with very small trapping team -- she says "no you didn't." Disgusting. Her despicable PR campaign the paint American Citizens as looney animal rescuers takes the cake? What do I have to gain by putting my life on hold and spending $20,000 of my own money?
Anyone who beats to Mrs. Littlefields drum should leave the animal welfare business because they have become exactly that..."all business" Do you know that since they called off the rescue efforts at the end of Sept (just 30 days after to worst disaster in American history...think about that...just 30 days) we have rescued as many as 2000 more animals (and returned many to owners) with 1/100 of the volunteers as we had PreSept 30th?
Ask the reputable Alley Cat Allies what they see daily:
Bonney Brown, campaign director
Alley Cat Allies
e-mail: bbrown@alleycat.org
phone: 435-644-8583
website: www.alleycat.org
Ask Michael Mountian at Best Friends who takes our real animals each night to his shelter at Tyletown and who did his own assessment of the region two weeks ago.
Call this woman http://vermillionanimalaid.blogspot.com/ Who has gotten nothing. Ask her how helpful Mrs. Littlefield has been.
You are being snowballed and I would laugh if it were not for thousands of suffering animals and thousands of suffering humans who are looking for them.
Regards,
Eric Rice
----- Original Message -----
From: Mary
To: Dr. Cindy Lovern
Cc: Eric Rice
Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2005 5:06 PM
Subject: RE: Please take the time to read! Dr. Martha Littlefield - AVMA We beseech you!
Cindy ~
Thank you for taking the time to respond and my apologies for the delay in my response.
There is absolutely a veterinary medical need in LA. Based on all available information from the groups still rescuing, person to person contact, and web updates, the animals that are coming in are very much in need of care. One example would be a Chow pulled last week, missing an ear with a terrible facial infection. No vet availble for triage. There is one vet....one...that ARNO has available to work with. Animals are still being brought in wounded, very sick from what they've been ingesting (outside of the feed/water programs), dehydrated and many in need of immediate care. Now that it's getting cold, this just compounds the problems.
Allie Cats would very much like to get to work on a spay/neuter program. No vets. Can't happen. New Orleans had a rampant ferel population of cats prior to Katrina. Why not let vets come and help ACA do what they do best? I can't come up with a logical answer.
Cindy, simply put, this crisis is not over.....not even close.
I realize that the assessment teams went out and found a small number of animals. This is mostly due to the fact that they went during daylight hours and limited their scope to Orleans Parish. There are still so many animals.....pets....out there. Each and every group down there is rescuing animals daily. It's during the night and dawn hours when the animals are seen and rescued most.
I give you, for example, that as of 11/25, Animal Rescue New Orleans (ARNO) and Allie Cat Allies (ACA) has rescued 65 cats, and two dogs, two rabbits, and a chicken, from a trailer park in Kenner. Best Friends was able to take 30 of those animals.
And this is only speaking to the needs of small animals. I trust that you are aware of the livestock / equine problems that are just getting worse by the day. Again, very little veterinary care available and so you have dozens of horses going lame, cattle starving....you've got to know this.
I guess, Cindy, that I simply do not understand why the state of LA would turn away competent medical help for it's animals. It just doesn't make any sense. It's obvious to me that the response from LA vets is present, but isn't at the level needed. These are people whose lives have been turned upside down as well, and in trying to right themselves and their practices, where would they squeeze the time in?
I must believe that Martha has no intent on causing suffering. However, it would seem to me that blocking out of state vets is doing exactly that. Who cares where the medical care comes from - really?! There are hundreds of professionals who have and are willing to donate their time, efforts and skills to do precisely what they vowed to do. The groups still down there have brought this to her attention. Over and over again. Volunteers have begged - I have begged.
I thank you for not only your committment to the field but for the love you have for animals. It is based on those things that I am begging you to make this decision independently - get ahold of Best Friends, of Jane Garrison, of ACA and ask them. They are the only ones who can give you an honest assessment.
I've attached pictures taken by Eric Rice who sent them to me to pass on to you. One of the Chow mentioned above, one of a Lab that was rescued from a pack, and of a Brick Yard where a pack of 20 dogs live. "This is why it is so hard to find animals. This yard had one entrance but once inside you found animals everywhere."
I would also ask that you visit www.ericsdogblog.com and take the time to view the video clips that he has up. They are far too big for me to send but they need to be seen. Please also take the time to read some of the Blog comments, many from volunteers.
Bureaucracy has no place here. Compassion and team work is the only way...the ONLY way this will ever be dealt with effectively. It doesn't matter whose feelings get hurt or whose ego gets bruised or who thinks they will look bad. The vets are needed, Cindy. All anyone has to do is ask any of the groups still down there.
Please do something, anything. Let 10 vets in. That's more than an acceptable compromise!
I head down 12/7 and will be more than happy to let you know what I see, but time is running out and I would hope and pray that if it were my pet (or yours) that red tape would not be what would seal her fate.
I have copied Eric on this in case you want to touch base with him. He has been down several times and has become a beacon for this cause.
Thank you again for your time and consideration. Please do the right thing for the animals, they deserve a chance.
Kind Regards ~
Mary
-----Original Message-----
From: Dr. Cindy Lovern [mailto:CLovern@avma.org]
Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 4:52 PM
To: thaleia@triad.rr.com
Subject: RE: Please take the time to read! Dr. Martha Littlefield - AVMA We beseech you!
Dear Mary:
Thank you very much for your concern. Is there an actual veterinary medical need in LA, or is the need focused more on animal husbandry, care, shelter, cleaning, etc which would not require any licensure issues be addressed? I know our disaster response teams, VMAT – Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams, have been demobilized, however we do still have 2 members in LA and the reports I am getting document a continued need for animal shelter and care, but not an unmet veterinary medical need – is that not the case in your opinion?
I have spoken to Dr. Littlefield extensively during this disaster response, and about this particular issue. In fact, Dr. Littlefield is working with officials in the Parishes to address all types of animal needs on a daily basis including the medical needs of animals.
By no means does Dr. Littlefield want any animal to suffer, and I can assure you that she is working day and night in order to make sure that the animal needs in LA are being addressed.
I really do appreciate your concern for the animals, and I can assure you that Dr. Littlefield and the AVMA want what is best for each animal victim just as much as you do. I have 6 pets at home, and I can promise you that all 4 cats and 2 dogs are a very important part of my family, so please trust me when I say that I know how important it is to make sure animals are taken care of. Dr. Littlefield is working very hard, and has been, to alleviate any animal suffering that is brought to her attention.
Thank you very much again. And please feel free to call me any time at – I am more than happy to talk to you.
Sincerely,
Cindy
Cindy S. Lovern, DVM, MS
Assistant Director, Scientific Activities
1931 N. Meacham Road, Suite 100
Schaumburg, Illinois 60173
Web: www.avma.org/disaster
Email: clovern@avma.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Mary [mailto:]
Sent: Monday, November 14, 2005 5:02 AM
To: LaVonne Varvil; AVMAGRD
Subject: Please take the time to read! Dr. Martha Littlefield - AVMA We beseech you!
Importance: High
To the esteemed AVMA,
We need your help desparately. We need you to enforce the oath that Veterinarians take. Dr. Littlefield is in no way acting in such a way that supports her oath to the profession.
Dr. Martha Littlefield, New Orleans, has halted the rescue efforts put forth by this nation's veterinarians, indicating that the vets of LA can handle the situation. This is simply NOT the case. Governor Blanco has refused to overturn this.
"Being admitted to the profession of veterinary medicine, I solemnly swear to use my scientific knowledge and skills for the benefit of society through the protection of animal health, the relief of animal suffering, the conservation of animal resources, the promotion of public health, and the advancement of medical knowledge.
I will practice my profession conscientiously, with dignity, and in keeping with the principles of veterinary medical ethics.
I accept as a lifelong obligation the continual improvement of my professional knowledge and competence."
Please, PLEASE, as the National Association, get in touch with Dr. Littlefield and instruct her to allow out of state veterinarians back into New Orleans to provide critical care for animals that have been rescued and who are continuing to be rescued. I don't understand how she, as a vet, can claim that she is acting in the best interest of the animals. If she were, not only would she be allowing out of state vets in, she'd be on the streets of New Orleans helping to trap, rescue, feed and water the animals to sustain life.
There were 12 animals rescued on Saturday alone!
Two rescued from this Saturday:
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b175/WillowLu/Bear11-12-05.jpg
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b175/WillowLu/LionTwo11-12-05.jpg
Dr. Littlefield is planning a "tour" through New Orleans to ascertain what the need really is. There is no way, unless she travels with rescuers, doing what they do, that she could ever grasp the scope of this second phase of rescue. We need YOU to stand up for what is right and just....for the animals.
Please let me know if you need any additional information and I would be glad to provide it.
http://www.animalrescueneworleans.com
http://www.alleycat.org
http://www.bestfriends.org
http://ericsdogblog.com
Respectfully,
Mary Thompson
Winston-Salem, NC
Volunteer
Anyone asking the American Veterinary Association (AVMA) for help is wasting their time. The AVMA is just like the American Medical Association (AMA). They are both political organizations who exist to promote and protect their profession. AVMA is not a group that promotes the welfare of animals, they promote the welfare of veterinarians and their businesses. They lobby Congress among other things. There are many fine, respected veterinarians and physicians who do not belong to the AVMA or the AMA because they don't want to belong to a political organization. Being a member of the AVMA or the AMA means absolutely nothing except they have paid dues.
Here is the email I received this morning from Tara High at the Humane Society of South Mississippi.
Isn't it ironic that only a few miles away help is needed and wanted.Animals are still on our streets in areas that have been devastated, findingcover in and under abandoned structures impacted by the storm. Largesections of our coastline are being bulldozed and these animals will onceagain lose their shelter. Our humane society is full and we still have manyanimals yet to pull in. Come help us in MS. Our animals can be saved withorganized, cooperative assistance and we in Mississippi would be gratefulfor your help.
Can anyone help Tara? I don't have any contacts in that area. Tara's email-sold@TaraHigh.com Phone # 228-863-4394.
RE: BUSTERGATE 11/26
Oh, no how did that happen... Now I can't remain "anonymous" anymore LOL
Cautiously hopeful breaking news regarding Buster> CARE says "ONCE ALL THE PAPERWORK HAS BEEN TAKEN CARE OF... at the request of his owners, Buster will be released to Sue Schmidt" (the lady who brought Buster back from Lamar-Dixon and was fostering him).
OK, all us "Dog-Lunatics" have heard that way too many times before to ~really believe it until it actually happens~! BUT does sound like Buster is soon to be busted out of CAREs jailhouse; AND perchance Thanks to the efforts of "Buster-Nuts" nation/worldwide and the Internet. YIPPEE... (It seems maybe even the AP picked up the story of Buster's Plight, too.)
So never underestimate the power of "outraged" animal lovers everywhere working together to help rescue and reunite the Hurricane pets. I've been keeping an eye on the Aspen Daily Blab and there were several Letters to the Editor re: Buster, from all corners of the country. Good job everyone. I'm sure CARE received they're share too. (Maybe even the Sheriff of Garfield Co?!)
Some "So Happy and Delighted to Hear the Good News about Buster" letters might be appropriate now. How does the old adage go; (Sometimes) You can catch more flies with honey... And don't want CARE to decide to dig back in and stall the paperwork... Need to reinforce the "you're doing a good deed" idea (or in this case think Pavlov's dog LOL)!
Reserving my HAPPY DANCE until we know for sure "Buster is finally Sprung!"
suzysmom
(who had to take Cocoa fur baby to the vet's today, thinking he may have a blockage or worse as he was acting so pained, but turned out he'd been too rambunctious and had a big owwie bruise on his hip and was sucking his little tummy in when he walked cuz it hurt... lots of R&R prescribed... and now watching Animal Planet's Katrina Pet Reunions :)
"Anyone asking the American Veterinary Association (AVMA) for help is wasting their time. "
At this stage in the game....NOTHING is a waste of time.
Mary
nice story on you in best friends magazine.
available online in pdf format.
"Dr. Littlefield is planning a "tour" through New Orleans to ascertain what the need really is"
This just about give me a freaking hear attack. She is going to drive down Canal Street at 12 noon and say she didn't see any animals as she stops over at the Starbucks that just opened for her afternoon Latte. What a joke. Another PR stunt. We all know the outcome of her tour. She might as well just do her normal trip to Saks 5th Ave to buy another pretty skirt. I doubt she has the appropriate cloths to do a real tour of duty in New Orleans animal patrol.
SO WHICH IS IT NEW ORLEANS? COME HELP US OR GET THE HELL oUT? YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS!!!
"Amoss' editorial today runs a similar theme crying out to the country and asking that Washington not forget New Orleans. The editorial is titled, "Do Not Forsake Us," and says New Orleans has become two cities with an enclave of survivors along the River's crescent and a shadow city where the water stood, devoid of power and people.
He says what is lacking for the rebuild is political will in Washington."
Friday, November 25, 2005 at 08:54 pm
posted by: parrotlover
I don't know how Miss "Baloney" thinks these animals are rescued, except by "over zealous" rescuers.
Maybe if she had ever actually been in the field... she might know what she is talking about.
I have just returned from my third volunteer trip.... THERE ARE STILL
ANIMALS THAT NEED HELP!!
Laura.... scrub the makeup off your face and spend a week in the
field.... You just may learn something!!
CAT FOOD NEEDED!!!
With all of the $ raked in by the natinal groups...you'd think the least they could do is make sure we all have enough cat food, but NO, we are OUT.
How are we supposed to continue feeding these anials until we can get them trapped if we HAVE NO FOOD? It's like a cruel joke, but it's true!
Support the grassroots organizations, PLEASE!
On the morning of Wednesday, November 23rd an AP article ran about the Buster story. In it Tracy Yajko is quoted as saying the following “Yajko said once all paperwork has been taken care of, Buster will be returned to Schmidt as requested by the Kingvalsky family. She said she understood Schmidt's concern that Buster would be put down, but no such decision had ever been made.” Several supporters of CARE have announced that Buster is due to be released this Monday or Tuesday, oh happy ending.
I wish.
That same Wednesday afternoon Bob Noone, one of the attorneys for CARE, drafted a letter letting Sue Schmidt know that “Any release of an animal by C.A.R.E. is dependant of a number of things first occurring, including of course, verification in the judgment of C.A.R.E. that the person purporting to be the owner, is, in fact, who they claim to be and that they are the owner. In addition, the owner must agree to hold C.A.R.E. harmless and release C.A.R.E. from any liability arising from the animals release.
As I mentioned, however, both Jeff Cheney and I will be out of the office until Tuesday of next week. Assuming the Kingvalskys contact C.A.R.E. and can verify ownership, we should be in a position to begin drafting the appropriate documents for forwarding to the Kingvalskys by the end of next week. When the Kingvalskys execute and return the paperwork to C.A.R.E., Buster’s release should occur fairly soon thereafter.”
The letter also mentions the fact that the family had contacted Rockey only briefly and didn’t mention plans for release. So although the day before this letter was drafted Yajko told a reporter the release was imminent, she either didn’t communicate with Rockey, her boss or she was just kidding.
So here were are, again, with conflicting statements from CARE representatives. Is Buster going to be released this Monday or Tuesday? Or are the attorneys returning to the office to begin drafting papers that might be finished this week to send to displaced NOLA evacuees and then have them send said papers back and then maybe start the release process “fairly soon thereafter.” It sounds like the Saints will be playing in the Superdome before Buster gets to go home.
You know, we “Buster-nuts” have been accused to unfairly stirring up trouble for this poor beleaguered shelter. But if we didn’t raise our voices like we have, this dog would have been PTS weeks ago. We found his family. The family has stated their wishes. CARE should comply. It is unfair and extremely discriminatory to make these people jump through these hoops to assuage the egos of this organization. The family’s address is listed on Busters Lamar Dixon paperwork with a small error on the street number; it should have been 1 instead of 9. This family is listed as the residents of the address. They have both described their pet and recognized his photo. Why on earth is CARE requiring all these extra steps and harassment? They do not deserve to be treated like this. Sue Schmidt who has only ever been looking out for the best interest of these dogs does not deserve to be treated like this.
Buster is not a bone to be fought over. He is the beloved family pet of the Kingvalsky’s. He needs to be safe, he deserves to be safe. And this family deserves to have him released according to their wishes.
BUSTERGATE!!
100% agree with catebb.
And think we should all wait until at least Mon/Tue and have officially heard CAREs latest update.
I've been keeping an eye on the Aspen Daily News and rest assured that the world's focus is definitely still on CARE (both in Letters to the Editor and a front page(?) news article by a "more competent/objective reporter"; as well as AP newspapers from around the country have picked up Buster's story. So have no doubts that Buster is NOT being forgotten.
Also the releases and waivers seem to be pretty standard legal stuff. But Buster's owners are certainly being made to jump through more than average hoops. And actually I'm beginning to think CARE is afraid of being sued once they release him.
I think the greatest majority of "Buster-Nuts" just want Buster Sprung from CARE's grip, and then safely out of Colorado. And many point out that poor Buster will most probably need some good doggie therapy after the terrible ongoing nightmare and trauma he's lived through.
Dog-Lunatics nation/worldwide will all do a HAPPY DANCE when Buster is finally happily reunited with his waiting mommy.
suzysmom
Re: Littlefield's Tour
Tour sounds like it will be the apt term to describe Littlefield's trip in contradistinction to a Tour of Duty. She sounds as if she is unaware that with her office and title, DUTY is required.
Kathryn.
McCartney attacks China over fur
By Adrian Addison
BBC Six O'clock News
Sir Paul wants China to bring in new laws to stop the practice
Sir Paul McCartney has vowed never to perform in China after seeing horrific undercover footage of dogs and cats being killed for their fur.
The former Beatle also said he would boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics after viewing the footage taken in a fur market in Guangzhou, southern China.
The film shows animals being thrown from a bus, and into boiling water.
A Chinese official said boycotts were not justified, and blamed US and European consumers for buying the fur.
In the film, dogs and cats packed by the dozen into wire cages little bigger than lobster pots are pictured being thrown from the top deck of a converted bus onto concrete pavements.
The screaming animals, many with their paws now smashed from the fall, are then lifted out with long metal tongs and thrown over a seven foot fence.
They are then killed and skinned for their fur.
Animal welfare group Peta believes many of them are still alive as their skins are peeled away.
I wouldn't even dream of going over there to play in the same way I wouldn't go to a country that supported apartheid
Sir Paul McCartney
Sir Paul, and his wife Heather, looked aghast and close to tears as they watched the footage for a special report for the BBC's Six O'clock News to be screened on Monday.
They urged people not to buy Chinese goods.
"This is barbaric. Horrific," said Sir Paul.
"It's like something out of the dark ages. And they seem to get a kick out it. They're just sick, sick people.
"I wouldn't even dream of going over there to play, in the same way I wouldn't go to a country that supported apartheid. This is just disgusting. It's just against every rule of humanity. I couldn't go there."
In another piece of the harrowing footage, shot this summer by an undercover investigator connected to the People for the Ethical treatment of Animals (Peta) campaign group, cats are seen squirming inside a sack which is then thrown into a vat of steaming water.
Olympic host
They are boiled to death and skinned by a fleecing machine similar to a launderette tumble drier.
Some of the 28-minute footage is too gruesome to be broadcast.
Campaigners estimate that over two million dogs and cats are killed for their fur in China every year. China also farms animals such as mink for their fur and makes over half of the world's fur products.
McCartney added: "How can the host nation of the Olympics be seen allowing animals to be treated in this terrible way?"
Heather McCartney, herself a vociferous animal rights campaigner added: "I've seen so much footage where these poor creatures are clearly alive when they're skinned. And for what? For fashion? It's sick.
"People in every other country in the world should now boycott Chinese goods."
Dogs were seen in grim conditions
"If they want to consider themselves a civilized nation," said Sir Paul, "they're going to have to stop this."
A spokesman for the Chinese Ambassador in London told the BBC: "Though cats and dogs are not endangered, we do not encourage the ill treatment of cats and dogs.
"But, anyway, the fur trade mostly feeds markets in the US and Europe. This fur is not consumed in China. So the Americans and Europeans should accept the blame.
"We have no plans to clamp down on this internally that I am aware of - it is for the US and Europeans to take their own action. They should boycott fur as a fashion material.
"I do not agree with Mr McCartney and his wife's point of view - a boycott of Chinese goods and the Olympics is simply not justifiable."
It is not currently illegal to trade in dog and cat fur in the UK and most of Europe.
Ethical abhorrence
But the UK government sees any legislation as being a European issue - as once the fur enters Europe from China, free trade and the difficulty of identifying the fur makes it almost impossible to police.
A DTI spokesman told the BBC: "The government shares the ethical abhorrence felt by many. That is why it banned by statute fur farming in the UK in 2000.
"Action is best taken at the EU level as a harmonised approach throughout the EU would have greater impact and avoid obstacles to the operation of the single market."
There is little evidence, as yet, of the fur products being sold in the UK. Campaigners insist they are available up and down the country, but it is impossible to tell the difference from other fur without the aid of expensive genetic tests.
The British Fur Trade Association, which represents the booming fur industry in the UK, insists that its members do not knowingly use dog and cat fur and have introduced a fur labelling system to try to guard against its use.
"As an industry, we are against any form of animal cruelty," said a spokeswoman.
"We deplore and work against the mistreatment of animals. For this reason, we also actively support and encourage the adoption of Western fur farming practices on Chinese fur farms."
Ruse accusation
But pro-fur campaigner Richard D North says a European ban is heavy handed.
"This is a ruse by campaigners to attack the legitimate fur trade. Nobody has ever found a large amount of cat and dog fur in the UK.
"The European fur industry would never use it. Why bother, when there are lovely skins from properly farmed animals?"
Euro MP Struan Stevenson has an array of cat and dog products in his Brussels office - including a coat made from Alsatian skin, a pelt made from four golden retrievers and a blanket made from around 70 cats. All were bought in Europe.
"It's cheaper to make these things from cat and dog than it is to make synthetic fur," he told the BBC.
"It really is time for this trade to be banned and the EU border to be sealed against it. And the new trade commissioner is more than sympathetic."
Markos Kyprianou, EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, is responsible for this area of EU law.
His spokesman, Phillip Todd, told the BBC: "As a human being, the commissioner abhors this trade and is very supportive of there being a ban. There are, however, legal obstacles which would need to be addressed before a ban could be put in place."
Have you got a story or tip-off which you think we should be investigating?
E-mail Adrian on six@bbc.co.uk
>CAT FOOD NEEDED!!!
Who do we send $$ and/or cat food too? Which organization?
see http://www.aspendailynews.com/article_11687
latest article re Buster
Sue dropped the lawsuit;
CARE claims it will do whatever Buster owners want.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
EDNAHs dogs are now posted on PetHarbor!
Is it true what the above responder just posted (per Project Starfish) that the LASPCA is trapping animals in NO and only holding for 5 days, then if unclaimed by owners, these poor babies are being EUTHANIZED?!
Who has the info on this horrible rumor/truth?! It can't be true can it!!
Eric do you know??
The information about the LASPCA and 5 days is untrue. Eric
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
*REVISED* WEEKLY RESCUE NEWS
Following is a small sampling of rescue work and vet care, or lack thereof due to the eviction of out-of-state vets by the State Vet's office, over the past week only.
1. 11/26/05 Pet rescuer Marilyn McGee reports 40 cats have taken refuge on Topaz Street in Lakeview.: http://www.nola.com/forums/animals/index.ssf?artid=121372
2. 11/26/05 Animal Rescue New Orleans reports "rescued a cat last night [and] ended up finding her owner in FL! The woman was shocked to hear her declawed indoor cat made it! The cat has been on the street for almost 3 months.": http://www.nola.com/forums/animals/index.ssf?artid=121433
3. 11/26/05 3 Cats (2 with collars) reported near Sharon Drive in Lakewood North/Lakeview: http://www.nola.com/forums/animals/index.ssf?searchart?artid=121462
4. 11/26/05 Only one vet, Dr. Hebert, working at Belle Chase Plaquemines Parish Animal Control. A Belle Chase volunteer reports "The shelter is open on a day by day basis. Dr. Hebert is spaying and neutering every day.": http://www.nola.com/forums/animals/index.ssf?searchart?artid=121485
5. 11/24/05 Animal Rescue Front reports "The rescues continue...it has been estimated that 250,000 animals were left behind in New Orleans when Katrina hit. That is staggering and sobering all at once given that we have saved somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000.": http://www.animalrescuefront.net
6. 11/23/05 Picture of Vermillion Parish dogs shows them trying to forage for non-existent food: http://vermillionanimalaid.blogspot.com/2005/11/dogs-left-to-forage-on.html#links
7. 11/22/05 Request for trapping of 3 cats in NO: http://groups.msn.com/disasterresponseanimalrescue/drarmsgboard.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=1377&LastModified=4675548756272063140
8. 11/22/05 Best Friends Animal Sanctuary reports "Thousands of homeless pets still cling to life on the streets, waiting to be rescued.... Emergency rescue shelter outside of New Orleans still has up to 600 animals on any given day and brings in up to 40 animals a day from volunteer rescuers who continue to work in the field.": http://network.bestfriends.org/News/PostDetail.aspx?g=86da7a605ab011da8cd60800200c9a66&np=108
9. 11/22/05 Animal Rescue New Orleans and Alley Cat Allies rescued 65 cats, and two dogs, two rabbits, and a chicken, from a trailer park in Kenner: http://www.animalrescueneworleans.com
10. 11/21/05 Garden District resident reports found Siamese Cat: http://www.nola.com/forums/uptown/index.ssf?searchart?artid=19387
11. 11/21/05 Report from Treme - Black bassett hound running loose: http://neworleans.craigslist.org/pet/112726005.html
Eric,
I think with your skills and experience and photos/videos, you are the perfect person to post an article at: http://www.nowpublic.com/
This is independent web-based media where the public can cover the stories the corporate media does not. I think this would be an opportunity to draw some attention to the need for volunteers, the petition, the bill in Congress, etc.
Are you up for it?
Eric,
A journalism major from University of MD is writing a feature article on the animal rescue efforts in New Orleans and is focusing on local efforts. You're local..Baltimore. I hope you'll consider contacting her because you have quite a story to tell!!
http://www.katrinapetvolunteers.org/connect/viewtopic.php?t=7
Wonderful news!!!->
by AnnetteDub, 11/29/05 15:46 ET
Wonderful, wonderful news: The owner of Midnight, Barbara Ward (Filmore, Lakeview), was back in New Orleans last week, and found one of her cats alive after three months!!!
See below:
"Shockingly, I found my cat Marmalade alive at my house when I arrived. He was sitting on the front patio waiting for me, alive but scrawny, alive ONLY because my online friends and FTF friends had been leaving food in the area. He ran as soon as the car pulled up and hid in the house. He came out when I called him, and I was just amazed that he was alive after all this time."
Thanks so much for all you have been doing to help Barbara's cats. If it wasn't for you, this little one wouldn't have made it! Thanks!!
We are still Looking for Midnight!!
Best regards,
Annette.
CAT FOOD DONATIONS:
how to send
donations of cat food
-- or canned mackerel
to help trap
wandering pet dogs and cats -----
SUPPLY NEEDS:
CONTACT:
Priscilla Gargalis:
pgargalis@yahoo.com
Colleen: 650-347-5881;
(Peace, Love, & Pets)
colleen@peacelovepets.com
SMALL SHIPMENTS TO:
ATTN: Rescue Groups
Southern Animal
Foundation
1823 Magazine Street
New Orleans, LA 70130
LARGE SHIPMENTS TO
Our storage area at
(Church’s parking lot)
1585 Magazine St.,
New Orleans, LA 70130.
PLEASE CONTACT
Holly: 757-641-4527
or
Rob Stone: 253-307-0969
to arrange for someone
to meet you there.
WE NEED:
Dry Dog/Cat Food
ANC (pop-top)
Canned Cat Food
and/or Canned Mackerel
(for cat/dog traps)
Fresh Water
(gallon containers)
Pedialyte
Disposable Lasagna Trays
or Litter Boxes
(for water on the streets)
Large Plastic
Dog Crates / Small Crates
Catch Poles
Humane Large Dog Traps
& Cat Traps
Towels and Sheets
Cat/Dog Gloves
Car Chalk for
Marking Rescue Vehicles
Gift Cards to Gas Stations /
Gift Cards to Wal-Mart
Monetary Donations for
Vet Care, Spay/Neuter, etc.
Vet Supplies
(Lactate Ringer
fluid bags & tubing),
antibiotics, etc.
Bottled Water, Gatorade,
Energy Bars,
Snacks for Rescuers
MONETARY DONATIONS:
Make check
payable to:
1-800-Save-A-Pet.com
send to:
1-800-Save-A-Pet.com
P.O. Box 7
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
Indicate in check memo:
Animal Rescue New Orleans
Donate online:
https://secure2.convio.net/
sap/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_
OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_
ID=1541
or try shortcut weblink
http://tinyurl.com/dnehz
Make check payable to:
Jane Garrison
2294 Otranto Rd.
North Charleston, SC 29406
Indicate in check memo:
Animal Rescue New Orleans
GIFT CARDS:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/
product_listing.gsp?cat=175427
Jane can download
Walmart gift cards from this site.
Or, you may go to any Walmart
to purchase a gift card
and mail to the address above.
For updated info
go to
http://www.animalrescueneworleans.com
San Francisco Chronicle
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/29/DDGSUFU2A074.DTL&type=printable
The dogs of New Orleans
After all the human tragedy, pets left behind were an afterthought -- except to a pack of determined rescuers
- Joyce Maynard
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
New Orleans -- It was 10:30 p.m. and in this part of town, as in so many others, electricity had not yet been restored. The only light in the abandoned neighborhood came from the headlights of a car and from the single thing that hadn't changed in this devastated landscape, the moon.
Here in the Ninth Ward, where old paper bags and empty cans blew down the middle of the street like tumbleweeds in the desert, it looked as though nuclear winter had set in. The streets were bleak and eerie, devoid of any sign of human habitation. In the distance: the sound of barking dogs.
Susan Kay -- a good friend of this reporter for more than two years -- had come from a comfortable home in Ross, shared with her son, Jeffrey, and their two dogs, in response to an emergency e-mail she had received from Jane Garrison, founder of AnimalRescueNewOrleans.com (ARNO). There was a crisis going on still, the e-mail said, but this one possessed none of the drama of a levee crashing down or looters in the streets, and those most affected weren't giving interviews. They were animals.
Eleven weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf, the floodwaters had long since receded. Most of the TV crews had packed up and moved on. Evacuated families -- by no means all, but some -- were straggling back from Texas and Alabama and a thousand other places, to find the little that was left of their former lives in Louisiana. But huge sections of the city remained uninhabitable.
By humans, at least. Despite the many weeks of rescue efforts, thousands of dogs and cats whose owners had been forced to leave them behind during the evacuation remained. Now they were roaming the streets. In the scale of everything else that had taken place in this devastated region, the plight of people's pets might seem insignificant, but not to anyone who ever loved a dog or a cat.
"There was this dog on the roof of a car," said Pia Salk, one of the founders of ARNO. "As long as I live I will never forget the sound of him, howling all night."
In the first weeks after the storm, volunteers had gone door-to-door looking for animals whose owners, thinking they'd return in a few days, had shut them inside houses and apartments. Later, the volunteers started bringing animals to makeshift shelters, and when there was no place left to put them, they brought food to the houses, hoping to keep people's pets alive until the owners could make it back. Sometimes the volunteers got there in time, sometimes not.
"In the beginning," Garrison said, "I'd walk down the street calling out, 'puppy puppy,' and there'd be dogs barking back to me from all up and down the street. But as time passed, there was less of that, and a lot more dead animals."
No clear count of the deaths has been made, but estimates suggest that well over 100,000 pets perished in the aftermath of Katrina. Approximately 8,500 animals have been rescued and 1,200 reunited with owners.
The Humane Society of the United States and Louisiana's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have taken a combined $40 million to date. But in a move that baffled many animal rights advocates, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco announced on Nov. 8 the discontinuation of the state's policy -- initiated during the crisis -- of allowing out-of-state veterinarians to offer assistance. Blanco's announcement is in line with the position of a number of official agencies in New Orleans: that the crisis is over.
LASPCA has announced plans to discontinue its animal rescue operation, theorizing animals could not be alive in homes after so much time. And in mid-November, following several days of informal assessment of the city's animal population, LASPCA held a press conference to say that the number of animals on the streets had been inflated by rescue groups. Only trained animal rescue workers were needed, said LASPCA Director Laura Maloney, adding that "people who have worked in disasters say there is a psychological effect, where some people have a hard time letting go."
Outraged animal rescue workers, who'd been on the scene for weeks, told a different story.
"You won't see many animals during the day, because they're scared and traumatized, but they come out at night," said Garrison. "They're everywhere, and they're starving."
Kay, 50, is the kind of animal lover who feels the pain of a suffering animal on her own nerve endings -- someone who can't attend a movie or read a novel in which a dog dies. In the first days after Katrina, she had offered herself as a volunteer with numerous animal rights groups, but the word came back from the Louisiana SPCA and others that, except for highly trained rescue workers and vets, volunteers were not needed.
Like many people living in places far from the reach of the hurricane, Kay, an art dealer, had studied the images of the disaster on television and in the papers, and felt helpless and frustrated and then depressed by her inability to make a meaningful contribution. She'd written checks to Katrina relief organizations, but none of that was the same as being there.
It wasn't that she saw the situation of people stranded or homeless as less worthy, but the helplessness of animals, the authorities' refusal to allow their owners to take them away when the floods were coming and the picture of their struggle to survive -- in some cases, actually swimming alongside the boats carrying their owners away -- had given Kay nightmares since the evacuation began.
"I keep imagining my dogs without me," Kay said. "I had to do something, so when I got the word I was needed, I got right on the plane."
When she arrived at her hotel in mid-November, there was no phone service or maid service, and she carried her bags up to her room herself. But downtown on Bourbon Street, lights were on. Shops sold Mardi Gras beads and T-shirts that said "Katrina Blew Me." Life wasn't normal, but it was possible to imagine a day when tourists would stroll these streets again. Even now, a band on the street was playing "Down by the Riverside."
Less than a mile away, at the makeshift headquarters of Animal Rescue New Orleans, on Magazine Street, volunteers were gathering supplies: water jugs, foil lasagna pans to hold food, bottles of electrolyte fluids, gloves, blankets and 50-pound sacks of chow. Traps were loaded in the backs of vehicles, along with catchpoles, leashes, collars, animal crates and heavy gloves.
The all-volunteer team of dog and cat lovers, animal rights activists and trappers were from all over the country. A dozen or more had been in New Orleans for weeks, living in tents at the FEMA workers' center, or in the vacant lot behind the rescue center.
They were a motley group: Garrison ran a chiropractic business in Charlotte, S.C., with her husband. Evelyn Black and her friend Bonnie -- who'd bought an RV specifically for animal rescue -- were well-dressed women in their late 50s from Cincinnati. Al Tendrick wandered in with a full beard and a worn-looking overcoat, a backpack and a big old dog rope, appearing as if he might have walked all the way from his home in Kentucky. "I know how to trap animals," he said by way of introduction.
Heidi Poor was a wedding photographer from Boston. On her last trip to New Orleans, she'd discovered a shelter in Alexandria, La., where the stray dogs were being euthanized, and spent the next three weeks finding homes for and transporting 500 dogs, until the shelter was empty. Poor had recently lost one of her dogs back home. "I loved that dog so much," she said, "if a person could marry a dog, I would have married him."
Every morning at 7:30, Holly Quaglia, a young woman from Norfolk, Va., who'd quit her job shortly after Katrina hit, climbed on a large plastic barrel to orient new volunteers. A young woman of such prodigious energy she was rumored to sleep no more than four hours a week, Quaglia directed volunteers to a map covered with adhesive notes, assigning each team to a neighborhood.
"Check the food left by the last team," she said. "See if a snout has muzzled through the chow."
Quaglia passed out sheets to be filled in with information about animal sightings. Those volunteers experienced at trapping would work to bring in animals for transport to a shelter in Tylertown, Miss., 2 1/2 hours away, run by the nationally recognized animal rescue group, Best Friends.
"Try not to judge people who left their pets behind," Quaglia reminded the group, but it was hard for the volunteers not to do so. Many would sooner have drowned in the floodwaters themselves than take off in a rescue boat leaving a dog on a roof.
On her first day, Kay and her rescue partner loaded her minivan and drove to the 30-block section of St. Bernard's Parish, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods of the Ninth Ward.
Inching slowly up and down the streets of St. Bernard's parish on her feeding run, Kay grew accustomed to the sight of trees on rooftops, their roots exposed. A car, nose to the ground and upended, leaned against the side of the house. Doors and windows were generally open because there was nothing left to safeguard.
And still, the families were out working on cleanup. In one yard, a row of taxidermy deer heads had been lined up along the front walk. At another, the ruined refrigerator at the curb still displayed family photographs of two teenage girls in their prom dresses.
These were families who had lost nearly everything they owned when the water hit, and nearly all of them were living in temporary housing, a handful in FEMA-issued trailers parked in their yards. If they were lucky, the bare frame of their mud-filled houses might still be standing, possibly with the roof, or a portion of it, intact, and if they got to the wood floors now, with enough bleach, they might prevent the mold and rot from eating away at the support beams.
At each house where there were people in evidence, Kay began with a greeting. "We're from animal rescue," she said. "We're just going around making sure people's pets get fed until they make it back."
She found a young couple on Plaza Street, just back from Texas. Someone had found their cat after they left. By the time they got to the cat, nobody thought she'd survive, but she he did.
"She just walks around in a circle 10 times now before she sits down any place," said the husband. "It's like she was in a war or something."
Kay met Chris Blappert and his sister Lynn Adams outside the house where Chris had lived for 30 years. Unlike many of the people Kay encountered, Blappert, 62, said he wasn't coming back to live here ever again. Before the hurricane, he'd lived five blocks away from each of his two daughters, three blocks away from his sister. Now his sister was living in Illinois and one daughter was in Texas. He was living in Hattiesburg, Miss., for now anyway. "Before, I could just walk over and see my grandkids," he said. "Now look."
Here was the irretrievable part of Katrina's damage to this family, and it was what came up most frequently when people talked about the devastation -- the physical proximity to their families they'd known before, and the realization that this way of life was gone now.
One theme regularly discussed was insurance and the experience, shared by many, of discovering that the coverage people thought they possessed had proved useless. The black line visible on every dwelling here, indicating how high the water had risen, confirmed the bad news: It was not the hurricane itself but the flood waters that wrecked people's houses, and few possessed flood insurance.
Nearly every house had words spray painted on the front, indicating a visit from rescue teams, a date and what they'd found there -- and it said a lot about how badly damaged everything else was that nobody complained about the spray paint on their doors and brick work.
In this upside-down world, house pets roamed the streets in packs and outdoor animals found shelter in abandoned houses, like the one whose door bore the spray-painted words "Pig Inside."
On one door, the words "Three dogs. Two Found Dead" caught Kay's attention. A young woman was outside, sorting through the muck, holding onto a box of moldy photographs she'd managed to salvage.
The woman, Sharon, had evacuated to Texas, she said, leaving the dogs in the house on the theory that she and her boyfriend would be back soon. Two of the dogs had been found dead in the attic. One must have run out the door when the rescuers opened it, weeks later. Today was the first time she'd been back since the floodwaters came. She'd lost everything. Now all she wanted was that one dog. "I gave him a bath the day before the hurricane and I forgot to put his collar on after," she said. "His name's Rocky."
In nearly every yard, the grass had been replaced by sludge. It had dried, contracted and hardened, looking like a set of puzzle pieces laid out on the lawn, or broken crockery from an archaeological dig that someone had been trying to fit together. Virtually every shrub in every yard -- every plant -- was dead, though in one ruined yard, someone had planted sunflowers in the mud and they were just coming into bloom.
Family possessions piled alongside the road -- the sum total of a person's home reduced to two moldy La-Z-Boy chairs and a bunch of pink insulation material, a few pots and pans and mud-caked dishes, a tumble of videos, stuffed animals and an ab-roller -- served as a reminder of how quickly everything can disappear, and how suddenly what seemed like so much can turn into so little.
Bad as it was in this neighborhood, it was worse elsewhere. That morning, a rescue worker from New Jersey, Nikki Dawson, had told Kay that everyone here assumed there were still dead bodies in some of the houses in the lower Ninth Ward -- the poorest areas where everything was so caved-in and impenetrable that the crews hadn't even gone in to look for people.
They were bringing in the bulldozers to those places, never mind the search for bodies. And here Kay was filling bowls of kibble for animals who might not even be there. It was hard not to feel discouraged. One either could conclude that nothing really matters, or that everything does.
Close to sunset, Kay spotted her first dog, a Husky mix skulking at the end of the road, looking warily in her direction. Half an hour later, Sharon -- the woman with the two dead dogs and the other on the loose -- ran up. She was holding a moldy photograph.
"I spotted Rocky over on the other street, but he won't come," she said. Kay looked at the picture. It was the dog she'd just seen.
There was no way to trap Rocky that afternoon, and Sharon was returning to Texas that night. But Kay wrote down her Texas address and told her she'd send a volunteer trapper out to try and get Rocky. If they got him, Best Friends would transport the dog to Texas. Hearing the news that she might actually retrieve her dog, Sharon could not stop weeping.
In the same neighborhood, a few blocks over, a pit bull had taken up residence in an abandoned house. Kay could see him looking out the front window, teeth bared. Whether it was the trauma of Katrina that turned him angry, or whether he'd always been that way, he was clearly not an animal to try and bring in on one's own. Kay wrote down the address of the place, and moved on.
That night Kay went out again, this time to pick up a bunch of puppies rescued just over the state line in the devastated town of Waveland, Miss., then on to check on traps in the Ninth Ward where volunteer Dawson had seen a dog sitting for days on a third-floor fire escape.
Kay made her way through darkened streets lined with dead cars, mattresses, rows of refrigerators duct-taped shut and an endless wall of trash lining both sides of Canal Street, high as a levee. Makeshift signs stuck in the ground along the median strip read: "Got Mold? Call us." "House Gutting, Cheap." "We buy old flooring and windows." "Wrongful Death Lawsuits." On a door in the neighborhood, in spray paint, another message: "Mr. Bush, Where are YOU Sleeping Tonight?"
On a stretch of Dorgenois Street, lit only by the moon, Kay stepped out of the car. A pack of dogs was barking. First one, then a pack. In the darkness, she could make out just the glow of their eyes. The way they stood, not moving, made them look like wolves, but then one of them -- smelling the can of dog food she'd opened -- made his way cautiously down the street toward Kay, close enough that she could see the dog had a collar on.
"He's someone's pet," she said, "He probably used to eat out of a bowl, and lie on the couch. Now he's scrounging in the trash, and there isn't even any food there."
By her fourth day in New Orleans, Kay started losing track of time, and forgot about hunger. She rose before dawn to set out traps while the packs were roaming. Her car stank of open cans of mackerel and dog chow and the animals she was transporting: a skinny red dog, a trembling cat, a brown spotted mutt with little more than skin stretched over skeleton.
Because the words "Animal Rescue" were painted on the side of Kay's van, sometimes a person stopped to ask if she'd look out for his or her dog or cat. An old man named Eugene Handelin, sitting on a folding chair on the front porch of what had once been a house, said, "Maybe you could keep an eye out for my Chihuahua, Mickey." His eyes clouded over as he spoke the name.
In times past, when Kay and her husband came to New Orleans to visit Jeffrey's son, Max, at Tulane University, they went dancing on Bourbon Street and ate at K-Paul's. Now she lived mostly on handfuls of nuts and granola, and at the end of the day was too tired to go searching for a real meal, too grubby-looking to go to a restaurant even if one were open, though one night she did stop for oysters and a beer. She found herself sitting next to a couple of hotel doormen recently returned to their jobs -- though, having lost their homes, their families were still back in Texas.
"My family's safe," said one man, full of gratitude. "What else matters?"
When Kay first arrived in New Orleans, the weather was muggy and warm. By midweek the temperature dropped 30 degrees, and after that she couldn't keep warm, which she knew meant neither could the animals.
Driving back to the center with a pregnant cat, Kay stopped to check a field next to an empty building that was once a nursing home. A dog with a broken leg hobbled out of an abandoned Dodge Caravan and limped away. Kay spotted another dog -- also with a collar on -- lurking a little way off. He looked as if he wanted to come toward her, and for a moment he actually ate out of her hand, before retreating. She wrote down the address, but she'd been given the frustrating news at that morning's meeting that the Tylertown shelter was filled to capacity. Until more homes could be found for the dogs already brought in, the best she and the others could do was feed the ones still on the loose.
In the late afternoon, riding through a particularly hard-hit neighborhood, Kay was approached by a construction worker who led her to a place in the road where two large manhole covers lay on the ground. From somewhere -- horrifyingly close, but unreachable -- they heard a cat wailing.
Kay had to rescue the cat, but the manhole covers were way too heavy. They couldn't be budged. She searched for some kind of tool. She tried poking a piece of wood down the opening, to make a ramp for the cat to walk up, but it wouldn't fit. She drove around looking for the group of men she'd befriended from the National Guard Bravo Division in North Carolina, but couldn't locate them. Finally, she called Rob Stone, back at the shelter. A half hour later, he pulled up in his truck.
The manhole cover had to weigh a couple of hundred pounds. Stone told Kay to stand beside him with a pole and stick it under the manhole cover, once he got it lifted up a few inches. Then, with the pole as a lever, he lifted up the cover and flipped it onto the ground.
The sound of the wailing animal was more desperate now. You couldn't see anything below, but Stone jumped into the sewer hole. He lowered his arm down into the muck. There was no way of knowing what was down there, New Orleans being the home to thousands of feral cats even before Katrina.
Stone felt around in the black muck. Then the animal made the most plaintive and terrified cry yet, and from out of the sludge he lifted up a kitten. Kay had never smelled anything so bad.
Kay didn't waste time bringing the kitten to the rescue center. She brought her straight to the animal hospital. "No animal should die in the sewer," Kay said.
Back at the center later, she met up with one of the trappers, Isabel Musial. Musial had brought in the little black dog who'd eaten out of Kay's hand the day before. He had a blue collar. Someone's pet, all right.
"He looks relieved we got him," Kay observed. "He looks exhausted."
On the last day of her week in New Orleans, Kay treated herself to a latte and a beignet at Cafe Du Monde before the first feeding run. In the darkness, she drove over a railway crossing and -- seconds later -- realized she'd just missed being hit by a train. The signal lights weren't working yet.
Sometimes during her week here, Kay had felt inconsequential, but as she headed out for the airport in the darkness it seemed as if -- in the middle of the chaos and wreckage -- she and the others were actually accomplishing a few good things.
She got a call on her cell phone. A friend, active with the Humane Society of Tampa, Fla., had gotten the society to send its mobile adoption unit to New Orleans, filled with supplies and ready to bring 60 animals back to Florida for foster care or adoption -- a trip that would free up space in Tylertown, so trapping could resume again.
Garrison, who hadn't seen her husband in a month, was working with a computer engineer on a program that would allow people to type in a few key words -- white spot on tail, torn ear, blue collar, answers to Buddy -- to help locate their pet among the thousands brought to shelters.
Tendrick, the trapper from Kentucky, had been dispatched with Stone, the hero from the sewer rescue, to capture the extremely dangerous pit bull at the house in St. Bernard's Parish, and after that to set a trap for Sharon's Husky, Rocky. Word came from the animal hospital: The kitten found under the manhole cover was going to make it. Tomorrow, a photograph of the little black dog would be posted on the Internet, and maybe then his owners could find him.
"To me, my animals are a part of my family," Kay said, heading through the darkened streets of the city, to fly back to San Francisco. "And the thought of people losing their animals, and animals losing the people they live with, is like a death in the family."
"For some of the people here," she said, "their dog or cat was their only companion. It doesn't fix everything, when you find them, but it's one good thing anyway. For some people, it might even be the one thing that keeps them from giving up."
THIS SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!
Service dog rescued and reunited
October 7, 2005
Imagine being blind, sick, and knowing that while you are being airlifted to a safe hospital your best friend was left behind in a flooded New Orleans East apartment. This is what Denise Okojo, a blind woman suffering from cancer, had to endure when she was taken to safety and her 6-year-old seeing eye dog, Molly, was left behind.
Okojo was airlifted from her roof to Lake Charles Memorial Hospital’s Oncology Unit, when her two-story apartment was flooded after Hurricane Katrina hit. Molly, her black Labrador retriever was left alone for 10 days, hungry, scared and susceptible to seizures. The seeing eye dog, who is epileptic, had no one there to administer her much needed medication. She waited patiently for a rescue team of her own.
Okojo, in her early 50’s and in need of chemo and radiation treatment, was distraught without Molly. When she shared her story with the hospital’s oncology nurse manager, Penny Choates, the wheels to save Molly were set in motion. The Louisiana SPCA and ASPCA knew they needed to get to Molly. Laura Maloney and Caroline Page of the LA/SPCA joined forces with Laura Lanza and Joelle Rupert of the ASPCA in an amazing water journey that took nearly six hours by boat.
In heroic measures, Page broke through a window in the first floor of the apartment, swimming through murky waters until she was able to reach stairs to the second floor. After searching in the dark, Page found Molly -- afraid, hungry and cold.
The rescue team took Molly to a temporary shelter for rescued animals for one night, then the service dog began the journey to Lake Charles, Louisiana to be reunited with her human, where a private hospital room was set up for her and a very grateful Okojo.
Their reunion was short-lived. Days later, Okojo had to again be evacuated in preparation for Hurricane Rita. She was airlifted to another hospital. Molly’s fate this time however is in much better hands. She’s being cared for by a Lake Charles resident and animal lover. Until she can be with her best friend, Okojo keeps Molly’s service harness at her bedside at all times.
Last dogs leaving EDNAH
CHANDRA HUSTON
Bulletin Staff Writer
GAMALIEL — Sandi Maglia and Amy Pierre watch nervously, like first-time mothers, as their new friend Lilly takes her place alongside so many others.
"It's OK," Maglia softly whispers, folding Lilly's pink blanket. "You're gonna be OK."
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"Yeah, you'll be just fine," said Pierre, patting Lilly on the back one final time.
Then the two women burst into tears.
Maglia and Pierre are volunteers working with the Humane Society of the United States to relocate 477 dogs from EDNAH (Every Dog Needs A Home) in Gamaliel. Lilly is one of those dogs.
Approximately 200 dogs left the grounds Tuesday with the Humane Society of Missouri out of St. Louis and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals out of Texas. The dogs are bound for shelters across the country.
Curt Ransom with HSUS said the last few dogs at EDNAH are scheduled to be relocated today.
Debbie Hill, director of rescue investigations with the Humane Society of Missouri, said the dogs will be checked out by veterinarians and behaviorists after they arrive in St. Louis.
"Most of the dogs are social," she said. "I think there is a good chance for adoptions."
Hill said the St. Louis facility can hold between 400 and 500 dogs. The organization had three trailers at the site Tuesday to haul approximately 150 dogs to different animal shelters in Missouri, including its own facility.
Loading the dogs into the trailers is a difficult task for Maglia of Rolla, Mo.
"I've only been here a day, but I'm so attached," she said, beginning to cry. "There are needy dogs that are so scared and they need reassurance. You get attached real easily."
Maglia wipes the tears from her eyes as she watches a volunteer place Lilly into a cage for her trip. The dog is scared — shuddering and holding her head down.
"It helps knowing they are going to a good place," she said. "The shelter in St. Louis is awesome. It's a great place."
The day is also hard for Pierre, who traveled on her vacation to Arkansas from Oakland, Calif., to help care for the dogs. She is a member of rescue organization United Animal Nations' division, EARS (Emergency Animal Rescue Service).
"This is better than a week in Mexico," she said. "I'd rather spend my vacation doing this."
Maglia agrees some things are more important than a vacation.
"Animals don't have choices, but we do," she said. "We choose to be here."
The women pause to look back at the trailer as Lilly settles in for the long ride north. They know they have done everything in their power to make the dogs' lives better but wish they could do more.
"Fold the blanket like this and just sit her on top of it, so it kind of goes around her," Pierre said to a woman filling out Lilly's paperwork. "She likes that."
The two women say their goodbyes to their friend and head back to the kennels to get another dog ready for transport.
And the tears come again.
this from Jason whose Candy was rescued over 2 months after Katrina-
others still need help
by Zuffton, 11/30/05 13:26 ET
hi, this is jason. this is my first time back in a library to use the net for weeks now. i have had several people post post on my behalf but this is the first time in over a month that i could post myself. i want to thank everyone who
helped to look for candy and who prayed for her safe return. Dr. C aroline from shreveport, LA. volunteered to drive all the way down new orleans, then up to texas to drop her off to me. without the help of so many wonderful people i would never have been re-united with my baby. I did not get candy back until november 10. thats a little more than two full months after the storm. if my dog survived then there are definetly others waiting to be rescued. i know what i am saying is true. when i returned home for the second time, the food that was left by rescuers for candy was eaten and the water was being utilized. however candy was not there to do the eating. some other dog or cat was using the food. a clean up crew in my area said they saw at least 2 dogs with collars on running loose on my block.
when i got candy back she was estatic to see us. But she is not tolerating strangers very well. i imagine this could be the case with alot of these dogs. they may appear to be agggressive at first but they have been through alot. they need love and time not euthanizing. candy developed an upper respiratory inffection but is now doing well again. she suffers from severe separation anxiety and can not be left alone. i am still working with her and giving her all the love she needs.
Vermillion Parish Call for Help
Their US Representative is Charles Boustany, Jr. Here is his contact info. (I plan on sending him some of the posts from this blog from people who first hand knowledge of the conditions and neglect by Red Cross/FEMA. I think this info should go to national and Louisiana media too. Someone want to help with that?)
Washington, DC Office
1117 Longworth House Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20515-1807
Phone: (202) 225-2031
Fax: (202) 225-5724
Lafayette Office
800 Lafayette Street, Suite 1400
Lafayette, LA 70501
Phone: (337) 235-6322
Fax: (337) 235-6072
Lake Charles Office
700 Ryan Street
Lake Charles, LA 70601
Phone: (337) 433-1747
Fax: (337) 433-0974
For Louisiana residents (the email form won't except non-7th District addresses):
http://boustany.house.gov/ContactCharles.asp
Eric-
Sorry for the depressing story but this sounds like EDNAH all over again. There are a lot of animal hoarders in the animal "rescue" business.
-Michelle
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_WA_Horses_Seized.html
Friday, December 2, 2005 · Last updated 2:27 p.m. PT
Thurston County seizes 14 horses from ranch
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LITTLEROCK, Wash. -- Thurston County authorities seized 14 horses from a ranch for abused and neglected animals, saying the owner ignored repeated calls to improve living conditions.
Animal officers and sheriff's deputies removed the horses and 13 dogs Thursday from Miss Paula's Ranch, operated by Paula Nichols on Littlerock Road.
Many of the 14 horses appeared to be underweight and some had diseased hooves from standing in thick, cold mud and manure, authorities said.
County officials said they have warned Nichols for two years that she wasn't taking proper care of animals at the ranch.
"Basically, we tried to work with her. But things finally got to the point where we couldn't ignore it anymore," sheriff's Lt. Mike Ware told The Olympian newspaper.
The case is now being sent to the county prosecutor for possible animal neglect charges, Ware said.
Nichols said she did her best to help the horses - going through 5 tons of hay a month, giving the animals medicine and calling in a veterinarian for a recent visit.
"How would you feel if your family was taken away from you?" she asked. "I would never do anything to hurt an animal; they're my babies."
Authorities said the seizure came after Nichols turned over three horses earlier in the week to Second Chance Ranch, a nonprofit animal rescue agency near Elma.
One of those horses was euthanized after suffering from a broken knee and severe arthritis. Another horse had one eye and bite marks from dogs chewing on its legs, and a third was caked in feces, Second Chance officials said.
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Information from: The Olympian, http://www.theolympian.com
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