Left Behind: The Pets are being shot in New Orleans !

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Friday September 9, 2005
News
Animal control officer Louisiana bound
By Candace Cooksey Fulton -- Brownwood Bulletin

Brownwood Animal Control Officer Nick Ferguson gets an approving lick from one of the dogs at the Brown County Humane Society Shelter. Ferguson will leave Saturday to volunteer with animal control services in Louisiana.
It won't be a dream vacation, but Nick Ferguson, animal control officer with the Brownwood Police Department, is ready and willing to go.
Ferguson received an e-mail Thursday from the Texas Animal Control Association, which has activated its Texas Animal Disaster System, and is "desperately seeking" volunteer animal shelter and field workers to go to Gonzales, La. According to the e-mail message, a command center at the Lamar Dixon Equestrian Expo Center at Gonzales has sheltered some 500 animals separated from their owners in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and expects the number of animals to increase greatly in the coming weeks.
"Any volunteers coming to help need to be prepared to work," the e-mail warns. "We need ACOs (animal control officers) who can keep things as organized as possible."
Volunteers have been instructed to make sure their tetanus, hepatitis A and B and diphtheria shots are current before coming into Louisiana. Also, each volunteer's list of supplies includes hip waders or full body wet suits, several pairs of thick plastic gloves, mosquito repellant that contains DEET, bleach to disinfect/decontaminate items every day, possibly several times a day, hand cleaner with an alcohol base and at least 3 gallons of potable water for each day of their stay.
Additionally, volunteers are asked to bring, if possible, wire cages, large kennel crates and trucks used for animal control.
On Thursday, Ferguson was working out the details for his trip and said he did not know if he would be able to take paid leave from the Brownwood Police Department, or, if he would need to take vacation time. Either way, he said, he intends to leave on Saturday for Gonzales.
Cheryl Campbell, executive director for the Brown County Humane Society, said she was not surprised at all that Ferguson was ready and willing to help.
"We're so proud of him for volunteering, for doing what he can, and we'd like to help Nick," Campbell said. "Volunteers are having to take their own supplies, their own food, their own drinking water. They told him there would not be hotel rooms, so he'd need to bring his own tent and sleeping bag. He has some of the supplies, but there's a lot of stuff he's going to have to buy and we'd like to help."
Campbell said Thursday, some of those at the animal shelter and on the Humane Society Board had decided to start a fund to help Ferguson.
"If anyone wants to donate and can bring a check by the shelter at 3016 Milam Dr. by 5 p.m. today, Nick will have the money before he goes. But, that's not much time, so we're making arrangements to continue to accept donations during the shelter hours 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and we will deposit the money directly into Nick's account," Campbell said.
source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2005/09/09/news/news01.txt
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Starving and stranded, the pets left behind in New Orleans
By Catherine Elsworth in New Orleans
(Filed: 06/09/2005)

Hundreds have drowned in the flood waters, their carcasses littering the city, and the yelps and cries of countless others echo through the deserted streets of New Orleans.
Thousands of pets are stranded and starving to death, their owners dead or forced to abandon them as they were evacuated to emergency shelters.
More than a week after the city was flooded, distraught owners have started coming forward to plead for information about the beloved animals they left behind.
Others had to watch their pets die - or in some cases, had to kill them themselves - after being told they could not bring them along in rescue vessels.
Outside the Louisiana Superdome, where evacuees sheltered in appallingly squalid conditions for up to six days, flood victims were told to leave behind their pets because they were not allowed on to rescue buses.
Now, 10 volunteers from the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have started visiting addresses where owners left animals. Often, they have to break in to save them as part of its "animal evacuations and recovery plans".
Special pet shelters have been set up with vets on hand to treat the survivors, many of whom have not eaten for days. Julie Anne Pieri, 29, an artist, sobbed as she described how she had been forced to abandon the cat she fled her home with and spent four days looking after in the heat and filth of the shelter.
Others refused to be evacuated without their animals. Diana Womble, who was picked up by boat six days after the flood waters surrounded her house, would not leave unless she brought her 15 cats.
Her rescuer told her no shelter would accept them and said that on the previous day they had been shooting the dogs they were forced to leave behind. Miss Womble held fast and her cats were eventually boxed up and loaded into the boat.
Gary Lee Mullins, 55, a lorry driver who was rescued after five days clinging to a tree, said he had to kill his beloved 16-year-old dachshund-chihuahua. He had saved her from the water, but was not allowed to take her with him. He said: "I could not leave her alive in the tree, she was too old to survive."
Donations to help animals are being received by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals with pet supplies company Petco offering to match offers.
At the New Orleans aquarium, more than a third of the 4,000 fish died because there was no power to pump oxygen into the tanks.
But staff at the city's Audubon Zoo reported that only three of its 1,400 animals died as a result of the hurricane - two otters and a raccoon.
source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/06/wkat206.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/09/06/ixnewstop.html
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Pet rescuers race against time

By Peggy Mihelich
CNN
(CNN) -- On the flooded streets of New Orleans you can hear the dogs barking for miles. They are trapped -- in houses, on roofs, tied to porches. They are frightened and hungry.
For the pets left behind after Hurricane Katrina, relief is on the way, but it's a race against time.
"It's a dire situation," said Melissa Seide Rubin of the Humane Society of the United States.
Rescue workers are worried most about pets locked inside homes and whose food and water supply may have run out. For them, rescue is their only chance of survival.
"It's one at a time, and it's fairly slow work," said Michael Mountain, president and CEO of Best Friends Animal Society, one of the first animal organizations allowed into the city to rescue pets.
"They are certainly all frightened," Mountain said. "The most difficult ones to work with are the cats who hide under furniture. The dogs tend to be easier. You can put out a treat for them, you can generally bring them to you."
With federal agencies and law enforcement agencies overwhelmed with rescuing people, it has been left to animal welfare groups and civilians to help stranded pets.
"We weren't allowed into the really bad areas until just recently, so now we are playing catch-up," said Rubin, the Humane Society's vice president of field and disaster services.
The American Society for the Protection of Animals, the Humane Society, the Louisiana SPCA, and the Texas SPCA are involved in the operation.
The Humane Society has 200 people in the field to handle the more than 2,000 requests it has received from people who have called a hotline or sent information.
The rescues are being conducted mostly by boat. Teams using inflatable rafts locate stranded pets and take them to a drop-off point, where they can be transported to a shelter.
Since Tuesday the Humane Society has rescued 90 dogs and 34 cats. Mountain estimates his group has rescued between 800 and 900 animals since entering the city on August 30.
As soon as the pet arrives at a shelter it is photographed and checked for ID tags. The health of each pet is evaluated, and fluids and medical treatment is administered as needed.
The information is put into a database that pet owners and rescue groups are feeding information into and that the Louisiana State Veterinary Association is maintaining. Efforts are then made to contact the owner of the pet. Unclaimed pets will be sent to area shelters and made available for adoption.
Jo Sullivan, senior vice-president of communications for the ASPCA, said most of the rescued pets are in good health but are scared.
"We haven't seen anything worse than some minor abrasions, and mild dehydration and, of course, some dysentery from unclean water," she said.
At the Lamar Dixon Center in Gonzalez, Louisiana, 50 miles north of New Orleans, hundreds of people come every day looking for their pets.
For one man, forced to leave his pet when he evacuated, there's a sweet reunion with his dog, Miller.
"Daddy came and got you, didn't he," the man said to his dog as he gave Miller a rub on the base of his neck.
For the rescuers and volunteers seeing a pet reunited with its owner fuels their effort.
"When people have lost everything and if you can reunite them with their pets, it makes such a difference in their lives," Rubin said.
Not without my dog
In the desperate race to pull human survivors out of the flood, rescuers haven't been able to accommodate pets. Some people have refused to leave without them.
"When this thing happened, everybody was shooting at everybody. The only thing I trusted was my dogs. I'm not going to leave them," said Robert, a New Orleans man who would not give his last name.
"The government has to understand that people are not going to leave their pets," Rubin said.
"When someone won't leave their pet we try and be there at the same time so we can take it for them, so that they can be assured that they can be reunited at some point," Rubin said.
On Tuesday afternoon a man needing medical assistance held up a "fleet of ambulances" on the Interstate 10 exit to Causeway Boulevard because he refused to leave his dog, Mountain, of Best Friends, said. A nurse in the caravan called Best Friends to see if the group could help.
"By the time we got there, they had to wrench the dog from him," Mountain said. "They had a few others [dogs] as well. They tied up three of them and took off. We had the description and managed to get hold of all three."
While, many national organizations were held up at staging areas just outside the city, Best Friends had boats in the neighborhoods rescuing pets. On Saturday, with the permission of the Jefferson Parish sheriff, Best Friends workers "broke in" to a pet store and saved about 140 pets -- from hamsters to snakes to tarantulas to birds -- Mountain said.
Donations and help
Organizations involved in the rescue have gotten support in the form of donations of money, pet food and medical supplies.
"We've got stuff that was shipped in from well-wishers from all over the country," Mountain said. "Yesterday we got a pile of blankets that ran 15 feet high."
Nestle Purina PetCare shipped more than 33 tons of dog and cat food to the affected areas, spokesman Keith Schopp said.
"We are actually right now putting another donation together that will be coordinated through Louisiana State University," he said.
With supply needs met, agencies like the ASPCA and the Humane Society are turning their attention to the long-term needs of housing the displaced animals. Many shelters in the New Orleans area were destroyed by the hurricane or the flood that followed. They will need rebuilding.
"The best thing that people can do right now is donate dollars and let us buy what we need as we need it, Sullivan said.

CNN's Adaora Udoji and Christane Amanpour contributed to this report.
source: http://cnn.worldnews.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=CNN.com+-+Pet+rescuers+race+against+time+-+Sep+9%2C+2005&expire=-1&urlID=15471071&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2005%2FUS%2F09%2F08%2Fpet.rescue%2Findex.html&partnerID=2006