Big Brown Eyes of Katrina

It’s been several months since Nina and I went to Louisiana to help with animal rescue. Several times I have attempted to sit down and write about the experience, but it is like trying to explain the universe in one hundred words or less. So many dimensions, so many small details that are not small at all, so many big brown eyes staring at me.

I have managed to document the activity – arrival, what exactly we did, the structure, and the things donated, etc… but that didn’t capture the big brown eyes of the situation. This is my attempt.

Time Management

It took 14 hours of almost non-stop driving to get to Lamar-Dixon. We pulled up at 2:00 in the morning. Time no longer had much meaning. Focus on the dogs, the needs, the care – it could be 11 in the morning or it could be 3 in the afternoon. I couldn’t have told you which it was.  Normally, my stomach dictates time to me. I’m hungry, it must be lunchtime… it must be dinnertime. My stomach clock didn’t work. or I forced myself to ignore its announcements – it just didn’t seem right to stop feeding, watering and cleaning to eat. If the dogs haven’t eaten why would I? Time to think about my family at home? No time.

Methods to Madness

It was madness. When we first arrived. There was no way of knowing which dogs had been cared for… that changed within hours of arrival. We attached plastic sheet covers to all crates – inserted feed and care sheets. Started writing down all activity for each dog. At the end of the day – we would do a check to make sure that each dog had been cared for. We would start at the south end in the morning – work as a team – one takes the dog out, the other cleans out the crate, adds water and food – dog goes back into crate, on to the next. We would work our way north. There were usually around 125 dogs on one side of the row. It would take a long time to get to the end. Unfortunately, some people would come into the building from the north end and see that the dogs had not be fed or cleaned yet that day. They would get angry as if someone was doing it on purpose! They would stomp around and start a mad rush to tend to all these poor dogs! They would be outraged. It was difficult to explain, (and to stop) to an angry person that there was a method to the madness and they were actually making it worse for the dogs. The dogs were starting to be put on a schedule. The ones on the south end were fed in the morning, the ones in the middle were next and then the north end dogs were fed later in the day. If they started feeding the north end dogs in the morning, then it throws off their body cycles. It was not the care that any of us would want for our dogs at home, but then this wasn’t home. This was the place of madness.

Big Picture

A woman arrived around 7:30 in the evening – we had all just completed bringing in over 300 animals. The dogs in the barns had been fed or were real close to being done. We were in the process of preparing for animals due to arrive within an hour. Getting crates, locating space, preparing food and water in all the crates, shampooers getting ready to clean. I was at the operations desk reviewing our plan for this next group of animals, when a woman in her 60’s arrives. She has a hard cased tote in hand, and plops it on the table. We look at her. “I am here! I am here to volunteer.” One of the team members responded, “Wonderful, thank you. Right now the dogs are all settled down and we are now preparing for the next wave to come in” then she looks at me as asks what is our primary need was at the moment. “Cleaning, we need crates cleaned desperately – we have none for our next group”. The woman looked at me and said, “that is not acceptable! I will not clean crates! I am a groomer I am here to groom the dogs!” She opens up her suitcase the size of a shoebox and shows a baggie with around 15 treats in it, and an antique pair of nail clippers. She explains that the nail clippers are the best ever made and that she was going to help with nails. I am standing there, listening to this woman, a smile on my face, yet thinking about how I needed at least 50 crates cleaned in the next hour, I need to make sure that the security guard was there to protect us from pit bull thieves, need to get at least 100 bags of treats ready for tomorrow and to also see if Nina caught the dog that got loose to avoid it getting shot when it got off the property. (Smile Beth – she has good intentions) “I am really sorry that you came all the way down here to do this, but right now we are just trying to keep the dogs alive. We can’t let you go into the area because it will disrupt the dogs– we are trying to let them settle down, they have gone through a lot today.”  This woman had good intentions but she just didn’t see the bigger picture – it is about life right now – not about nails.

Thinking of the Good Things

Everyday, Day in, Day out, barking. Problems. Sickness. Confusion. Fear. Sadness. Heat. Anger. Aggression. Panic. Trauma. Hopelessness.  Day in, Day out.

How can someone sleep after living that? Nina and I decided every night before we would go to sleep we had to come up with three things that were good that day. It took a while the first night. Review of the day in our head, a very long day, running it over in our heads – searching for the good things. I had one! A man brought about 100 stainless steel bowls and handed them to me. That man had no idea what a very big deal that was – we were desperate for bowls for our big dogs. It made our lives a bit easier. Another day the good thing was, when they brought in some dogs mid afternoon there was a puppy about 6 months old, it was a pit bull and is was very mad and very aggressive and already had marks of a dog in training. Anyone who came near it would get a full body attack. We had to do something, usually the vets will check them out, but no one was getting near that dog. They could not just leave it in the crate, filled with toxic water, no food, and no water. They told me we might need to send him to Barn 1 PTS if he doesn’t settle down. I moved the dog over to my working area and covered the crate, yet still trying to let fresh air move around the crate. I ignored the puppy’s’ angry threats and started to give him jerky every time I walked by. I kept the puppy nearby to monitor him. I managed to get a stick and move bowl that was inside the crate over and fill it using a plant-watering pitcher (long snout) and continued to drop food. As the hours passed the temperature started to cool just a bit, the puppy soon learned that body slams were not going to change his situation, and there was a woman that was taking care of him. When I rested, I sat by his crate – I didn’t talk to him, I just sat.

A very long day, and we processed many dogs and I was exhausted. My final task for the night was to deal with the pit bull puppy. By now, I had a new friend, he had settled down. I decided that he was going to stay in our barn for the night. Nina and I took him onto our fighters and biters row and we were able to put him into a larger clean crate, with food, water and a generous chew bone. He settled in and not a fuss for the rest of the night. So, that day, we saved a puppy who didn’t know better, had not been treated very well and he found some comfort and could finally go to bed with a belly full of food and some nice cool water. That was a good thing.

The So Sad Visitors

Everyday some people would come to the barns looking. There seemed to be a very high percentage that were just there to gauwk at the “sad sad situation” – walking up and down the rows, showing pity. I had very little tolerance for them because they were the ones that usually stopped us in the middle of working to tell us how sad this situation was. They would often grab my shoulders and almost shake me and then start crying. They weren’t there looking for their lost dog, they weren’t there to help clean and fed, they were there out of their own selfish sick curiosity. And apparently to be sure to tell us how sad the situation was. Yes, believe it or not, we knew it was sad – we were living it night and day. But I also saw a bunch of people working very very hard doing back breaking work for hours on end. I saw dogs that were safe, had food and were alive. Yes it was sad, darn sad. No time for crying. No time for pity.

Lost People

Some of the people that showed up were looking for their dog(s). It’s impossible to remember all the dogs in the ever-changing dog population but strangely we actually did know and remember many. “I’m looking for my dog, he has big brown eyes has long brown hair and a white tip on the tail” – “Let’s go see if this might be the place to start looking” We tried to avoid saying “Yes, I know your dog is here” just to avoid the big let down if the dog wasn’t there or was the wrong, “big brown eyes, long hair with a white tip” dog. We were also highly suspect of people coming in to find their dogs because some were not there to find their dog; they were there to get a dog.

There was a family that came in; they had pictures, walking around looking. I stopped them and asked if they needed some help, my way of weeding out the shoppers and the gawkers – “yes we are looking for our dogs, we have four.” The whole family clustered around me as I looked at the pictures. I said, lets just walk down here and see… At the end of the row was a group of around 10 dogs, there was one that was very very quiet and I would do a bit of a double check on her because sometimes quiet could mean sick. She wasn’t sick, she was just quite. I took this family and started to walk towards this section, I hear… “Mom! Dad! Mom! Dad! Here! IM HERE! MOM!”… It was the quiet girl - We were 30 feet away. I stopped them and turned and said “Well, your dog found you guys – you don’t have to identify your dog – you don’t have to prove that she is your dog – she just told me you are her family.” I asked one of them to stay with her and the rest of them to go get the paperwork completed. About an hour later the family came over with their dog, who had a high step in her walk and a sparkle in her brown eyes, to thank me (don’t know what I did) and to say that the others were gone, didn’t make it. But they got their baby girl and it will all be better. We learned to let the dogs tell us who the honest people were and who was lying.

Barn 5 – Row F

When we arrived the first day, there was an estimated 800 dogs in Barn 5, there were approximately 75 pit bulls and 30 rotties. These dogs were dispersed throughout the entire barn area. Many of these (as well as a handful of other types of dogs) had “did bite”, “aggressive”, “may bite” notations on their crates. Mind you, we had volunteers coming into the place everyday, many don’t even have a dog, they just have big hearts and want to help. The first morning we were there I saw a woman – fit for her age – but was no less than 75 years old - feisty woman, but darn small - walk up to a “will bite” crate (an airline crate that is covered on all sides) and reach right in and pull out a rather large pit bull and attempt to walk this dog down a row of hundreds of barking dogs. Bless her heart, had to stop her, that was an accident waiting to happen. That was our first day there and the day that we moved all the “fighters and biters” over to Row F – a single isle on the outer side of the barn. We then established that only experienced handlers could work in this row. These dogs were to be fed, watered and walked just like the others but needed someone who is willing to wait for 5 minutes for the dog to walk out of his crate, or to be able to read a dog that wanted to pick a fight. We were also told about of some pit bulls down in another barn that others would not touch and it was suspected that they had not been out of their crates for a long time. We prepared crates in Row F and then we sent down 4 handlers, each walked their dog around a few times and then walked them to “Hotel F” where they were greeted with fresh cool water, a nice portion of food and a fantastic chew bone. Row F did have dogs that were actual pit fighting dogs – dog aggressive dogs – we separated crates by using torn up boxes pulled from the dumpsters. These dogs were actually nice to handle for people, but they would go after another dog in seconds flat. Nina devoted most of her time to Row F – she took great care for these dogs (she has a pit bull who is the sweetest thing ever and is a trained search and rescue dog) The times that I wasn’t running around I spend helping Nina with these dogs. “Pit Row” was full of tough dogs, mean dogs, but the funny thing was – when Nina and I walked around, they were quiet and settled. They were treated as well as possible. One of the Doctors came down one day and said “this row is amazing – they are so quiet – they just sit there with their big brown eyes watching every move you guys make - they seemed to have really found some peace here” … I said “it doesn’t hurt to always have cookies in your pocket too. They learned that quiet gets rewarded. I have no problem bribing.”

Good Bye

Ironically, we had to return home because Nina had made a commitment to attend a Search and Rescue Seminar. We tried to wrap up details “this guy here has learned how to move the tray at the bottom of his crate and actually walk his crate around… we don’t mind, gotta give him credit for creative problem solving – after all he is still in his crate.” And “This little girl here has learned how to open her crate door – so be sure to add a twist tie or cord to the door” And “See this big boy, he holds his potty – so be sure to check him first when you come in his area – get him out to go potty because he has been holding it for a long time” Its like trying to leave your children with a baby sitter, the details, the worries, we knew these dogs and their likes and dislikes. We saw improvement daily. We had to leave, we left an hour later than planned … still offering suggestions to problems, “please stay” … we drove away. We got in the truck and drove out of it all. I drove two miles away and stopped to get a large Diet Coke (extra ice please). Sat on the curb under a shade tree and called home. Nina sat in the car and did the same. Jeff asked me “are you okay?”…. Had to think about it for a minute… “Yes.” … His voice was wonderful to hear. I think he could hear the tears… I said nothing. “See you soon”…  I sat for a few more minutes, got into the car looked at Nina; we sort of smiled at each other and settled in for the 14-hour drive home.

Observations

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Many family pets were being rescued, but there were many strays (apparently New Orleans had a stray dog problem prior to Katrina) and many fighting dogs were brought in. There was a high portion of the dogs that did not fall into the family pet category.

We had a lot of men hovering around the pit bulls noting locations and descriptions. We worked on securing the area to prevent them from stealing them. We moved the pregnant pit bull (within days of giving birth). She would have been a jackpot.

The animal rights people were there in full force. Often ripping off tags from crates reacting on rumors "that a blue tag was for PTS (put to sleep)". They were so wrong! They were the ones that needed medical care. Their actions harmed these dogs more than helped them.

Dont even get me started about the purebreed clubs...

Very Few of the Dogs being brought into the facility were Spayed or Nurtured. (Quote from lady washing the dogs "wow this is the third male neutered in the last 4 days!")

Family pets that were well cared for prior to Katrina were significantly healthier and adaptable.

Many dogs that were brought in and were near death, suffered injuries that occurred well before Katrina.

Someone had duct taped a large flap to their dogs collar - it had contact name and phone number in huge letters. This dog had a very good chance of finding owners because of this. Very Smart.

Some dogs had it better at this facility than they did in their own "homes".