Pawprints of Katrina

by Cathy Scott

  When Gracie walked into the RV, “she looked around, plopped down, and put her head on my feet,” Clay said. “I could tell she was saying, ‘Thank you’ because the RV was quiet, cool, and like home. She really touched me; she was so delicate.”

  After a couple of days, Clay said, “she went off to New York.”

  Marcello Forte with Animal Haven, a rescue group in the urban neighborhood of Flushing in the New York City borough of Queens, was at base camp when Gracie arrived. He took the grossly underweight Great Dane back with him to his shelter. Once there, she was diagnosed with and treated for Addison’s disease, an adrenal insufficiency, and then placed with a family in upstate New York.

  Meanwhile, her owner, upon learning that rescued animals had been taken to Camp Tylertown, drove there on a late September afternoon looking for her dog. She was told that Gracie had been placed in foster care but that arrangements would be made to deliver her back home to New Orleans. Once her person learned that Gracie had been diagnosed with Addison’s disease and was undergoing treatment, however, she decided, after discussing the matter with the foster group, to leave Gracie in her new home and allow the foster family to adopt her.

  Gracie slowly gained the weight she had lost and is thriving at home with her housemates, a pair of Labrador Retrievers. Marcello reports that Gracie “settled into her new home with the rest of her playmates” and “truly is a gentle giant that would rather be on your lap or resting her head on your favorite pillow.”

  18

  Over the Rainbow Bridge

  FIVE DOGS—Silver, an aging Bulldog; Big Mama, an obese Lab so fat she couldn’t walk; MacKenzie, a frightfully thin English Bull Terrier; Tilly, an old Boxer with cancer; and Jellybean, a Pit Bull with severe heartworm—had one thing in common: all found homes where their adopters doted on them. Nevertheless, once there, they didn’t make it. Somehow these pets knew their days were numbered and waited until they found homes before crossing over the Rainbow Bridge.

  Silver—who had ID number BF-01 and the distinction of being the first dog rescued by Best Friends—died four weeks after he went home. He was walking in his backyard with his foster mom and two other dogs when he simply sat down and passed away. Even with heartworm disease, Silver, who was at least twelve years old, was a big, lovable Bulldog who never let his illness get him down. While at Camp Tylertown, Silver had the run of the office and took turns sitting next to volunteers as they worked, often plopping himself on top of their feet and looking up at them to say hello.

  When I said good-bye to Silver on September 14, 2005, the day he went to his new home, I sat down on the floor with him. He climbed up on my lap and reached up so he could give me a kiss.

  Silver became the office mascot after Sherry Woodard, who oversaw animal care at Camp Tylertown, walked him inside to get him out of the heat. A few days later, volunteer Molly Golston fostered Silver, who had a tricolored, marble-streaked coat, and then took him home with her to Wake Forest, North Carolina.

  On October 18, a little over a month later, Silver walked onto the grass in the backyard just like he did every morning. This time, there was a different outcome. Without any warning that he wasn’t doing well, he passed away.

  “He lay down in the yard, and the dogs and I sat with him,” Molly said. “It was the sweetest and saddest thing. I am so happy I brought him home and had him for the time I did. He was happy here.”

  Just when volunteers thought they had seen it all, a dog they would call Big Mama arrived at base camp on September 16. With her were two other dogs: Dad, a Chow, and Scooter, a young Chow-Lab mix. A rescue team found the three dogs in a house, submerged except for their heads in muddy water and debris. All three welcomed the rescuers and didn’t put up a fight when they were pulled from the muck to safety. When the dogs arrived at camp, Big Mama was the first pet lifted out of the transport van. “I remember the gasps,” said volunteer Kelli LeBlanc with the Westminster Pet Sanctuary, a small rescue group in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. “We were not even sure if she was really a dog at that point, she was so big. She was whisked away to emergency very quickly.”

  Dad was wet and tired, and his matted fur was so filthy from the sludge that he was shaved by a groomer first thing the next day. After a physical examination, his admissions paperwork included the notation that he was panting, weak, and depressed. Scooter was taken under the wing of Kelli and her friends from the Canadian rescue group, who took him for walks and let him stay in their tent at night.

  Big Mama was a black Flat-Coated Retriever with a friendly disposition. The problem was that she could barely walk because she was eighty pounds overweight. To make matters worse, she had been bred too many times.

  Believed to be the most obese dog rescued from New Orleans, Big Mama recuperated in the M*A*S*H Unit at Camp Tylertown. Volunteers put her in a wagon every day and pulled her around the yard so she could get fresh air. They lifted her by draping a beach towel under her belly and using it as a sling to support her. Slowly, she improved. Volunteers, including Kelli (who had brought her in), regularly visited with her in the triage building. “I remember when I went in and saw Big Mama stand up for the first time,” Kelli said. “I cried tears of joy. She was a beautiful girl who would not give up without a fight. There were too many of us pulling for her.”

  The three former housemates—Big Mama, Dad, and Scooter—were fostered out to volunteer veterinarian Janine Pepine, who helped care for them at base camp before she drove them to her hospital, Tender Loving Care, in Medina, Ohio.

  In late November 2005, Big Mama had surgery for a pre-existing uterine infection. Afterward, her health deteriorated. Her kidneys failed, and she passed away on December 1.

  “I still think about her,” Kelli said about Big Mama. Scooter and Dad found new homes in the Medina area.

  Some pets had a better chance of survival than others. For a Bull Terrier named MacKenzie, the odds were against her from the start. She arrived at Camp Tylertown emaciated and with a fungus growing all over her body. When the rescue team found her in Orleans Parish near Lake Pontchartrain, she was in a locked garage, sitting on a workbench with a padlocked chain around her neck. It was September 29, which meant that she’d been trapped in the garage, which had bars on the windows, for at least thirty days. An independent rescue team, who had heard her whimpering, made it through the door, cut the chain from her neck, and rushed her to the Lamar-Dixon shelter in Gonzales. A couple of days later volunteers took her to Camp Tylertown’s M*A*S*H Unit because she needed more medical care than they could give her. As it turned out, on top of everything else wrong with her, MacKenzie also had a bad case of heartworm infestation, plus her abdomen was bloated because of intestinal worms.

  She went home with the HOPE Safehouse group to Racine, Wisconsin. She was too weak to undergo heartworm treatment until she was stabilized. Even so, MacKenzie, who was partially blind, was protective of her kennel until she recognized the voices of people she knew.

  Regular updates about MacKenzie were posted on the group’s Web site, including details about her weight gain and gradual health improvements. At the organization’s temporary shelter, she took daily walks. Just a handful of volunteers could walk her, however, because she still occasionally became territorial in her kennel.

  Her owner was found, and workers spoke with him a few times, but while arrangements were being made to safely transport her home, she developed pneumonia. MacKenzie passed away shortly after.

  Sherry Woodard had spent time with the white Bull Terrier while she was in the triage area at Camp Tylertown. Her large kennel had been on the porch at Kitty City, in the shade, in part so she would get used to being around people and get past her kennel possessiveness. Volunteers during breaks would sit outside her kennel carefully petting her and talking softly to her so she’d become accustomed to their voices. Sherry was one of the few who could sit for long periods, without MacKenzie growling at her. Volunteers watched as MacKenzie cuddled up to Sherry.
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br />   The intensity of Hurricane Katrina created a survival-of-the-fittest situation, and not many older pets made it. Most of the survivors were anywhere from six months to five years old. So stumbling across an aging dog came as a surprise to the pair who rescued Tilly, a Boxer who was about twelve. She went to live with Dana Herman of Minnesota, who helped rescue her from under a house in the town of Gentilly (which is why Dana named her Tilly).

  Dana and volunteer Ken Ray had taken an address list with them into the field that day in mid-September. The addresses were from people asking for someone to check on their animals. What Dana and Ken found wasn’t good. Rescuing Tilly was the high point of the day.

  “This was the worst day,” Dana said. “We went to the addresses. Most of the animals we found were dead or not there. There was supposed to be a Yorkie in an attic. The crate was there, but the crate door was open and the dog was gone. It was so surreal, because the stairs to the attic were pulled down (leading from the attic to the first floor) and all the doors and windows to the house were locked. There was no way for the dog to get out, and no one had been inside the house yet. The water hadn’t gone to the attic, but it was so hot up there.”

  The pair went to another house, whose residents had left a phone message asking Best Friends rescuers to break in to find their pets. When Ken and Dana arrived at the house, bars were on all the windows except for the bathroom. “It was supposed to have two Australian Shepherds and three cats inside,” she said.

  As Ken pushed her up and through the unbarred window, Dana caught sight of a dog. “Right as Ken was about to push me through the window, I saw this little face under the foundation of the house next door,” she said. “I told Ken, ‘There’s a Boxer!’ He said we had to go inside the house first.”

  When Dana jumped down into the bathroom, the room was full of sludge. She stepped out of the bathroom and “there were the two Australian Shepherds. They were dead for we don’t know how long. There was a cat door. Hopefully, the three cats got out.”

  She had to step over the bodies to open the front door for Ken, and they searched the rest of the house to make sure the cats weren’t still inside. “We went outside and I said, ‘We have to get that little Boxer.’ She was curled up under the house, and we pulled her out. She was a senior dog. She was so thin, and she had tumors all over her. One was hanging from her side that was bigger than a softball.” But she was alive.

  That night, Dana stayed behind at base camp, and Ken drove the Boxer home to Alabama with him. The dog then went to Minnesota once Dana returned home a few days later. Animal Ark, the group with which Dana had traveled to Camp Tylertown, posted Tilly’s photo and identifiers on Petfinder’s Web site.

  Later, Animal Ark was contacted by a volunteer who put Dana in touch with a family searching for an older Boxer. “We thought we’d found her owner,” Dana said. “I spoke to the people and sent them pictures. The location was nearby.”

  Before that, however, Dana had taken Tilly to her veterinarian to have a large tumor on her spleen removed. Tilly also was having seizures and was under veterinary care for that, too.

  When the potential owners saw the photos of Tilly, they told Dana they thought she was their dog, who was named Deja.

  “I still don’t know for sure if it was her, but it might have been,” Dana said. “They told me she had tumors. I spoke to the daughter and the mom. It sounded like they wanted her back, but they wanted to fly her right back. They needed to wait until she recovered because she had just undergone surgery. My vet called their vet, and then I never heard from them again.”

  Tilly was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma, an aggressive cancer of the blood vessel cells.

  For Dana, it was Tilly who saved her on that hot September day. “It was sad,” she said. “We didn’t find any animals alive except for Tilly. She’s the one who helped me. I’m lucky I found her that day.”

  Tilly lived with Dana and her husband for a total of nine months, four of which were after the tumor was removed.

  “She was the sweetest thing in the world,” Dana said. “She was just perfect. We didn’t even have her a year, but I’m glad she didn’t die under the house. At our house she would come out in the morning after waking up, and she would do these dive-bomb rolls. She would get so silly. She got along great with dogs, cats, people, kids, everyone. She was a special little dog.”

  What Tilly and the other pets of Katrina seemed to want the most was to be in a home and, just like the two-legged Katrina refugees, to return to their lives as they were before the storm. For those pets who weren’t reunited with their people, the next-best thing was a new home. Silver, Big Mama, MacKenzie, and Tilly did not die homeless or alone on the streets of New Orleans. They went home first.

  It was the same for Jellybean. Terrie Spease knew how sick the light-brown, red-nosed Pit Bull was, but she had no idea he would go so quickly. Seven days after Jellybean arrived at Terrie’s home, he died of heart failure. Terrie was devastated.

  She had agreed to foster Jellybean—a handsome dog who was rescued with two chickens and a rooster in Central City—even though she was fully aware that he hadn’t been well at base camp, that he was in heart failure and needed hospice care in a quiet home environment. Terrie, a hospice nurse, was just the right person for the job.

  She had met Jellybean during her first tour at base camp and later kicked herself for not taking him home sooner. She had gone home and couldn’t stop thinking about him. Deep down, though, she knew he’d been on a gradual downhill slope, no doubt even before he was rescued, and that what he needed was, indeed, hospice care.

  While in his new home, Jellybean ran in the yard and hid toys. Best of all, Terrie reported, he loved sleeping on her sofa. But one day in particular with Jellybean stands out. “My favorite moment with him was about an hour after getting here,” Terrie said. “I took him walking in the field across from my house, and he lay down almost immediately and began to roll. He seemed to roll around forever.

  “To me, he was ridding himself of the tragedy and heartache of the previous months. He was cleansing himself to start fresh. He was a big, scary-looking dog, but I believe deep inside he saw himself as a Poodle—a tiny, couch-loving Poodle.”

  Those who fostered Katrina pets who passed away sooner than anticipated all said the physical distance they were able to put between Hurricane Katrina and a comfortable home for these pets was enough to make the pain of losing them worthwhile.

  19

  Picking Up the Pieces

  FOR SOME HURRICANE VICTIMS, the biggest losses from the storm were their pets. It was that way for Barbara Seals. She knew that if she could get her Prince back, her family, who’d already lost two loved ones, would be one step closer to being whole again, one step closer to picking up the pieces. Likewise, for the new family of a dog named Cheesecake, patiently working through a lengthy adjustment period for the frightened dog was their way of helping one canine hurricane victim. And for artist Cyrus Mejia, a former New Orleans resident, creating a work of art in memory of the volunteers who’d put their lives on hold to help the pet victims was his contribution to the cause.

  All Barbara Seals wanted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was Prince, the dog she’d lost to the storm. On Thanksgiving weekend in 2005, I returned to New Orleans and stopped at a Walgreens drugstore on South Claiborne Avenue in Carrollton, the only store open for miles. It still had boarded-up windows, and only part of the store was stocked with merchandise. Standing at the door waiting outside for her niece was Barbara, along with a black Cocker Spaniel named Princess. I bent down to say hello to the dog, and Barbara began telling me her story. I then took a photo of Barbara and Princess and offered to write a story about them for the Best Friends Web site.

  Before the storm, Barbara had left her other dog, Prince, with her fiancé, Clarence Smith, at his apartment on Rampart Street, a historic neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward. Clarence stayed behind after the storm to be with Prince. When he wa
s ordered at gunpoint to evacuate a few days later, he left Prince in an apartment in the building with a couple of other dogs. When he returned to retrieve Barbara’s dog after he was allowed in two weeks later, a sign on the door said that Prince and the other dogs had been picked up by animal control and taken to the Louisiana SPCA. Clarence and Barbara went to the shelter twice but were told that there was no record of Prince. They were advised to go online to the Petfinder Web site to find him. They visited the site for weeks to no avail, searching for a Cocker Spaniel who looked like Prince.

  Barbara, who’d kept Prince’s littermate, Princess, with her when she evacuated, searched high and low for Prince. Her two daughters posted a notice on Petfinder and searched every posting on the site for his breed, “Cocker Spaniel,” with no luck. They went to shelters. Still no luck.

  What they didn’t know was that Prince had been picked up from Clarence’s apartment on September 18, transferred first to the Lamar-Dixon shelter, and then moved again to another local shelter. From there, he was flown with a group of dogs to the Last Chance Ranch Equine Rescue in Pennsylvania. That group placed Prince in a home with foster mom Melanie Bailey.