by Cathy Scott
He was the scruffiest, funniest terrier to entertain volunteers. Appearances, however, were deceiving. Scotty, who was grossly underweight, also had a bad case of heartworm; but a veterinarian recommended he not be treated until he put on weight.
So when Laurel headed home in mid-March 2006, Scotty went with her. But the fence around Laurel’s home was too short for a tall terrier, so in April, Scotty went to live in Florida with Darla, who had two goals: to get Scotty past the heartworm treatment and to locate his people. “I found his owners, who had lost everything,” Darla said. At that point, the Waiters weren’t in a position to have Scotty live with them. She also learned from his family that Scotty’s real name was Tweetie.
Next, three-year-old Tweetie began the medical regimen to eliminate the disease. “The summer was spent watching him breathe as he fought his way through heartworm treatment,” Darla said. Tweetie survived and continued to gain weight. All the while, Darla stayed in touch with Bill Waiters and his family. By Christmas, the family was ready to take him, so Darla drove him home. She met the Waiters at their original home, where Bill was spending his days repairing the storm damage.
“As he ran to Bill and ran around the yard, I could tell Tweetie knew where he was,” Darla said. “I drove away, and I looked at him sitting on the porch of the house, next to his owner, with his tail wagging, ears up, and happy. Tweetie was comfortable at the house and comfortable with the people. He knew it was his house, and he knew he was home.”
Back at Camp Tylertown, workers in a cattery dubbed the Cat Barn quickly learned that a feisty feline named Petey was a challenge to care for. The orange tabby wanted nothing to do with them. He wouldn’t let his caregivers touch him, and he tried to scratch them every chance he got. Just feeding him was a task. Still, workers dodged his claws and attended to his physical needs. According to caregiver Mckenzie Garcia, Petey wanted them to steer clear, so they accommodated him by giving him his space. It had been the same when he was rescued on October 6—more than a month after the storm. His family had left him upstairs when they evacuated, but at some point Petey had taken up residence under their house. To retrieve him, a rescue team had to crawl under the house and corner him.
When his caregivers witnessed Petey respond immediately to his family, who had learned that he was at Camp Tylertown, they were flabbergasted.
Once his family arrived, Petey became a different cat. Owner Sandy Ikenberry walked into the Cat Barn and called out, “Petey!” His back was to the door and he was curled up at the back of his kennel, but his response was immediate. He jumped up, swung around in his kennel, stared at Sandy, and then started meowing nonstop. “He’s usually not a verbal cat,” Lane Ikenberry said. But Petey wasn’t used to living in a cage. At home, before Katrina, he had had free run of the Ikenberrys’ home. Lane reached inside the kennel, picked up Petey, and held him against his chest. “I’m sorry we left you, Petey,” Lane told him. “I’m so sorry.” Petey fixed his eyes on Lane as if the cat couldn’t believe it was really him.
“Wow. And we figured he might be an unlikely candidate for adoption because he was so grouchy,” Mckenzie said as Lane cradled his cat.
“He’s not grouchy anymore,” Lane said. “He gets cranky sometimes at home, too. This ordeal may have changed his attitude.” They left the Cat Barn with Petey safely inside a carrier for the ride back to New Orleans.
A Chihuahua-Dachshund mix named Ebony was hit by a car as three women watched in horror, too far away to prevent the accident. That dog, a small, frightened fear biter, would become my next foster dog.
I was volunteering in January 2006 when Ebony, limping and obviously in pain, arrived at Celebration Station from a hospital. From Ebony’s paperwork, we learned more about her background, especially about how she’d been injured. Nancy Walsh, a refugee from New Orleans, had relocated to a busy street in Metairie and happened upon Ebony.
On December 18, 2005, Nancy and two friends were in a car when they spotted a tiny black dog darting across the busy street. When Ebony tried to cross traffic, a car hit her. The back tire rolled the small dog’s body on the pavement.
Surprisingly, Ebony tried to get up to walk away but only succeeded in hobbling some. Nancy and her friends immediately ran into the street and picked her up before another car could hit her.
Ebony was stunned and in shock. Nancy described her as hurting and in bad shape. She wasn’t wearing a collar, so they took her to a nearby veterinary hospital—the only one open in the area—where it was discovered that Ebony had a broken pelvic bone. On January 4, Ebony was taken to Celebration Station and put in a kennel. She wasn’t happy being crated and cried a lot, so I began fostering Ebony, who later tested positive for moderate heartworm disease.
Near the end of the month, Ebony flew home with me to Las Vegas. A few weeks later, I drove her to the Best Friends clinic in southern Utah for her first heartworm treatment. At the time, she was the smallest dog the clinic had treated for heartworm, a disease that isn’t common in Utah (although since then, the clinic has treated many more cases). A few days later, Ebony developed a 105-degree temperature, and I rushed her to a local emergency hospital, where she received a prednisone shot and was ordered to be on strict bed rest. Back home, I had to take Ebony’s temperature twice a day to make sure she didn’t develop another fever. I took her with my dogs on hikes or to the dog park, carrying her instead of letting her walk. She went along for the ride, her nose lifted to the wind and her ears flapping.
Even though Ebony had been through so much at the young age of two and a half, she adjusted well and showed her personality as an affectionate dog who loved to play and hike. Her pelvic bone healed on its own. Initially she was afraid of men and, for some reason, tall women, but after a few months, she adjusted to them. Nancy, when told that Ebony had survived, was pleasantly surprised because when she and her friends had dropped her off at the hospital that December day, they thought she wouldn’t make it.
Seven months after I began fostering Ebony, Denise Jenkins, who lived in Utah, read a story about Ebony on the Best Friends Web site and applied to adopt her. Today, Ebony lives in Connecticut with Denise and her four other dogs, who each morning run together in a park bordered by woods. At night, she sleeps under the covers, guarding her side of the bed. Ebony, the smallest of her new canine family, rules the roost.
During the first week of January 2006, a team of trappers tracked a scruffy-looking feral-like dog they called Benji for seven days. They set a humane trap each day near where they’d spotted him, but he didn’t fall for it. On the seventh day, they returned to check on the various traps they’d set, and when they got to one set for Benji—a six-foot-long trap in St. Bernard Parish—they found a calico cat inside. Alex Farr, one of the trappers, put on heavy protective gloves in case the cat decided to scratch him. After he picked her up, however, it was evident that she was a gentle—albeit frightened—cat. They didn’t get Benji that day, but they did save a ten-month-old gray-and-white longhair cat, who was placed in a foster home five days later.
Dogs like Benji and cats like the gray, fluffy one were becoming more difficult to rescue. As the weeks turned into months, rescue teams depended on tips from residents, construction workers, and utility workers, who became their eyes and ears as to where cats and dogs were hiding in neighborhoods. Ads were placed in newspapers and public service announcements were given to radio and TV stations to alert residents to contact the rescuers if they saw any animals running loose. For Rex, an aging Chihuahua abandoned in a falling-down home, it was a neighbor who called in a tip to the Celebration Station triage center. Rex now lives in Jefferson, Louisiana, with Jeanette Althans, her teenage daughter, Emily, and their two cats. “He tries really hard not to chase them,” Jeanette said. “But he can’t resist.” That’s okay with Jeanette. “It’s hard to imagine not having this happy little guy.”
Life before Katrina was good for Rex. He lived in Uptown New Orleans. But after the storm, the house pa
rtially collapsed, and Rex’s elderly person was moved to a rest home. Her family left the dog behind. Four weeks later, Best Friends volunteer rescuers Craig Hill and Anne Welling went to the house and found Rex under it. The house was partially caved in, which surprised them both, given that a senior citizen had continued living there after the hurricane.
Anne spoke with the neighbor who’d called the triage center to report that a dog was still there, but alone. She learned from the neighbor that the dog’s name was Rex, he liked children, and he was about nine or ten years old.
It was by happenstance that Rex found his new home. In January 2006, Jeanette, who had been replenishing food stations for pets still out on the streets, stopped by Celebration Station to pick up more dog and cat food. Emily, twelve years old at the time, spotted Rex and asked if she could walk him. That was all it took.
“We weren’t going there to adopt a dog,” Jeanette said. “It was fate.” Since going home with Jeanette and Emily, Rex has had medical issues, including abnormal blood-test results (now back to normal) and an eye problem (which has since cleared up). “My vet calls him the miracle dog,” Jeanette said.
For now, Rex’s health is good, and both Jeanette and her daughter cherish each moment with him. “I would adopt an older dog again,” Jeanette said. “But I certainly hope we can enjoy Rex for a few more years. He is the perfect little dog.”
In the case of a mother dog and her Dachshund-Cocker Spaniel-mix puppies, it took a team of volunteers nearly a day to retrieve them. Initially, one of the puppies, later named Puxley, led the team not only to her littermates but also to her mother. The canine family was safely retrieved from under a house after her patient rescuers held court for nearly twenty hours until the adult dog and pups were safely in their care.
It was late morning in early February 2006 when the tracking-and-trapping team received their daily assignment sheet at Celebration Station, which included a sighting of the lactating mother dog. She’d been spotted in an unpopulated neighborhood in Gentilly, in St. Bernard Parish. The team headed that way. When the group arrived, they noticed several houses with spray-painted letters on the front wall, indicating that people had been found dead inside. After much walking and searching, the group spotted a mama dog and her puppy on the street. The adult dog, frightened away by the rescue team, ran off, leaving her puppy alone. “We followed the puppy to see where she would go,” said Barb Davis, who that day was with a team that included Rachel Laskowski, Kris Garvey, and Bill Daugaard. Puxley, the pup, walked to a nearby house and tried to climb the steps. “She was so little and the steps so big that her attempt was unsuccessful,” Barb said. The pup then walked to the side of the house and hid in an opening under it. The rescuers followed her. That’s when they heard the cries of other puppies. Two of the trappers shined a flashlight under the house and then crawled over debris as they followed the sound of puppies crying. They found the puppies tucked into a corner of rubble. They counted five, but the mother had not returned. “By this time, we were losing daylight,” Barb said. Bill and Kris agreed to stay for however long it took the dog to return to her pups. It ended up taking all night. Bill and Kris sat quietly from a distance but still in sight of the makeshift home and waited for the mother to return.
At six o’clock in the morning—nineteen hours later—the mama dog went back to her pups. Bill and Kris quickly closed the opening to the basement and then called Rachel at Celebration Station; she, in turn, woke up Barb. They headed back to the neighborhood, crawled under the house, and plucked the puppies out. At one point, the team saw the papa dog—a black Cocker Spaniel—near the house too, but they weren’t able to catch him. The mama and puppies were driven to Celebration Station to the puppy nursery.
After a five-day holding period, two volunteers, including Barb, each adopted one of the puppies. The other three went to New Orleans residents. The mother dog, who was later named Precious, was adopted, too. But a few days later, when the team returned to Celebration Station one evening after working in the field all day, they discovered that Precious had been returned by her adopters because she’d been having accidents in the house. That particular day had been a long one, so when Barb saw that Precious had been returned because she wasn’t completely housetrained, Barb sat down with the dog, hugged her, and began to cry. “She’s been living with her puppies under a house, where she gave birth, for five months,” she said. “Of course she’s not housetrained.” Barb decided right then to take Precious home with her and Puxley.
On February 16, 2006, Barb, Puxley, and Precious flew out of New Orleans to Barb’s home in Doniphan, Nebraska, to live with her husband, Lyle, and their Chesapeake Bay Retriever. Barb’s adult daughter, Jennifer, later adopted Puxley—now named Madison. Precious and Puxley-Madison get together regularly to play.
A twenty-hour rescue of a mama dog and her pups may seem lengthy, but for an elusive dog named Bunker, the rescue took two months, as well as the perseverance of Best Friends rapid response team member Jeff Popowich and a determined gator hunter.
When Bunker, an American Staffordshire Terrier, was first spotted running loose in English Turn—a gated country-club community in the West Bank of New Orleans—he didn’t want to leave. Who could blame him? The upscale homes there didn’t sustain the devastating damage other communities experienced. During the flooding, it was a safe haven for Bunker. He knew a good thing when he saw it. Neighbors, however, weren’t happy, mostly because of Bunker’s looks.
Bunker, one said, fell into the pattern of potentially scary-looking Pit Bulls and related breeds who are often, in fact, spoiled house pets. Residents didn’t recognize Bunker as one of their own. They were frightened, and so was Bunker, especially since a security guard and animal control officers had been chasing him for weeks. People who lived at English Turn watched each day as Bunker avoided officers by jumping into a man-made lake or by swimming across a moat to the other side of the golf course greens. Finally, a Best Friends rescue team was called to help round him up.
“There is a moat that goes between the houses and the golf course,” Jeff said. “Bunker was living around the green on the ninth hole. He would swim back and forth across the moat, which was known to have alligators living in it from time to time.”
But Bunker wasn’t careless. “He is a smart dog who would keep his distance,” Jeff pointed out. “I was able to find where he was sleeping and actually got close to him a few times. I would be able to get within a few feet of him, but I couldn’t touch him.”
The chase went on for several weeks until the homeowners association hired a gator catcher to trap Bunker. Jeff stayed in touch with the security officers and the trapper to make sure that when they caught Bunker, Jeff would be there to retrieve him. The trapper subdued Bunker using a tranquilizer gun while Bunker was on Lakeway Court next to the golf course. “He was able to catch him,” Jeff said. “Bunker is a great dog, and I am just glad that he was caught and ended up with us.”
Dogs like Bunker—Pit Bulls and related breeds who don’t always get along with other dogs—can get into the wrong hands. So Bunker was transferred from Celebration Station to Camp Tylertown, where staffers called him Bunker Baby because of his affectionate disposition. Animal expert Sherry Woodard took care of Bunker. “When he’s afraid, he tries to scare people,” she explained. “It’s all fear-based. When he’s not afraid, he’s the cutest thing. People fall in love with him when he’s wiggly and playing with toys. He had to have been someone’s spoiled pet at one time. That’s the truth in shelter dogs across the country, because [the dogs] are so out of place.” For Bunker, she noted, “It just takes time for dogs like him to change and make new friends.”
In May 2006, when Camp Tylertown closed, Leah Purcell, an experienced dog handler who runs Spindletop Pit Bull Refuge in Houston, began fostering Bunker. Leah tried to find his family, but no one either working or living in the English Turn community knew where he had come from.
It took a long time, but
in the summer of 2007, nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina, Leah Purcell found a home in Houston for Bunker as the only dog in a family. Bunker was a prime example of the follow-through that was done with so many of the Katrina refugee pets—all with the purpose of placing them in appropriate homes.
9
The Faces of the Volunteers
SACRIFICING JOBS AND LIVELIHOODS and donating their time to save animals, volunteers placed their own lives on hold to rescue and care for other people’s pets. Strangers, brought together by a disaster to save the animals because their owners were unable to, worked beside like-minded people and formed lifelong friendships. They were drawn to the Gulf Coast because of the images shown on TV of pets stranded on rooftops and debris floating in murky floodwaters. Compelled to help, people left their own pets and families and headed south.
Each day, new volunteers arrived at Camp Tylertown and, beginning in late December, at Celebration Station, all in the name of helping refugee animals. First thing in the morning, after the animals had arrived the night before, a handful of volunteers, along with a veterinary technician, took every new animal through the admissions process. They were photographed, microchipped, and vaccinated. Their medical paperwork was filled out, and any tag information from their collars was noted. Groomers kept busy decontaminating and bathing the newly arrived dogs, while caregivers washed and sanitized food dishes and then helped feed the animals. Then the animals were ready to be put in runs or kennels. Volunteers who didn’t handle animals signed up for everything from cooking meals to typing data into the Petfinder Web site and a Best Friends database.
