Sunday, October 23, 2005

Headed Back for a Second Tour

After much thought, consideration and an excessive amount of frustration, I've decided to return to New Orleans for a second pet rescue mission.

Most rescuers who have been to New Orleans in the past few months will tell you that returning home was the hardest part of the trip. The separation is immediate and intense, and often marked by difficulty sleeping, eating and relating to others. Sleep is hard to come by when your mind is ablaze with images of the animals you couldn't save and rampant with visions of the ones who are still out there, waiting to be saved. It is hard, and most everyone returns home with a burning desire to go back to the devastated area again.

Still, you try to focus on the good things, and not let yourself get too tightly wound around the bad. You wear the rescue shirt loosely, knowing that the the good you did will have a domino effect, even if unseen by you, and that many good things will come of it. And constantly, you tell yourself that furry little lives were changed and bettered for the work you've done.

However, when the major rescue groups pulled out of NOLA (New Orleans, LA) and it became clear that there were still over a thousand animals trapped inside homes (with barely a skeleton crew of rescuers), I was struck again with the frustration of not being there to help. For many of the rescuers who had already given up time and money to help save animals in New Orleans in the preceding weeks, a second trip was not an option. My choice of careers makes my lifestyle more flexible than most, and therefore makes me a more optimal candidate to return. Still, making the decision to return comes at a considerable price financially, and it was one I had to weigh very, very carefully. Any day I am not in California is a day I don't get paid...be it from acting, substitute teaching or tutoring. Having already missed 3+ weeks of work, I had to measure every dollar in order to make another week-long trip happen.

But in the end, the idea of the animals suffering and slowing starving to death forced my hand. It was a personal decision, and one I know I will not regret. To me, saving even one animal is worth it. You can't put a price on saving a pet's life.

There are so many animals out there in dire need right now. Time is not on their side, but some will survive anyhow. I encourage everyone to find a way to help. If you can go there--even if you have no prior rescue experience--please find a way to make that happen as quickly as possible. If you can not, please make it possible for someone else to go on your behalf. Lives are at stake and you can help make a difference.

If you are interested in going to NOLA to help and need information, please feel free to contact me directly. If you would like to donate to our upcoming mission, or to the medical expenses of the animals we have already rescued and are being treated, please click on the "Make A Donation" link on the left side of this page.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Urgent Plea for Animal Volunteers

There is an URGENT call out RIGHT NOW for people who can get to New Orleans to help rescue animals that are still trapped inside houses. At the moment, there is still a list of over 1200 animals that are TRAPPED in homes without food or water, and EVERY DAY, ANIMALS ARE STILL BEING PULLED OUT ALIVE.

Unfortunately, there are not enough rescue volunteers now to save these animals. At one point this week, I'd heard that there were 12 volunteers there. In order to save the animals who are slowly starving to death, more volunteers are needed to go there and save them.

I urge anyone to either get on a plane and go there NOW or help finance someone else who can make the trip. Time is running out for these furry ones. Please help us get to them all.

A Paypal link has been established so that donations may be given to help support both the rescue volunteers and to treat the rescued animals who have Heartworm, kennel cough, mange and other illnesses. To donate, simply click the link marked, "MAKE A DONATION" on the left side of the page (under "links"). Thank you

Friday, October 21, 2005

Rescued Pets Now On Death Row

Our worst fears are now coming true. Some of the shelters that are housing Katrina animals are starting to euthanize some of the victims that were rescued, simply because they have Heartworm. Heartworm is a treatable disease, but it costs money to treat. Some shelters are choosing to simply put animals down because of cost.

So...we are pulling our first one this weekend. It is a cocker spaniel, and it will be going to a good foster home. We are taking care of the issue because we know about it. Also, we've had to handle it very delicately, taking care not to rock the boat and anger the shelter to the point of euthanizing this dog anyway. Shelters have a high sensitivity to rescue groups and will just as soon put an animal down if a rescue group seems too zealous or condescending. With this in mind, some of the very good folks I am working with have taken great care in handling this first case. To this end, I will not publish the name of the shelter here. We can't afford to tip the scales for one when it could be to the detriment of many. When we have specific information about shelters, we will ask those of you who live LOCALLY to make some subtle inquiries and to help us handle this in a quiet way. If you are angered by this injustice and want to help, please contact me. BUT, I caution everyone...please be prepared to handle this quietly and gently...we can't handle it in a radically-charged, emotional way or we will lose all those precious pets. Unfortunately, even though this issue makes our blood boil, we have to handle it as if it didn't. This may be the only way to get these rescued animals off death row.

Yes, it is unfair and heartwrenchingly sad, but we must play the hand we have been dealt. When it is all over, we can start to right the injustices.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Looking for My Owner!


Do you know me? I am a beagle/terrier mix from New Orleans that was rescued without tags. Though they're taking good care of me in foster care, I miss New Orleans and I sure do want to go home. If you know my parents, can you please tell them to get in touch with Catherine, the woman who's trying to find my Mom? She's pretty good at translating to paw, and has promised to let me know when she finds my family. (and yes, I am on petfinder.com!) Post a comment here if you know me.

Woof! woof! Bark! Bark! Woof!

Monday, October 17, 2005

Angelic Find

This can certainly be interpretted in many ways, but the story is worth sharing. It is a good, and truthful story.

Late one afternoon after spending a long day rescuing animals, we decided to drive to St. Bernard Parish. We had heard about the school shootings the day before and felt that we needed to see it for ourselves. We had little direction to the location, and no maps of the area. The parish was barren, for the flooding had been high and the neighborhoods had become a silent wasteland. It was unnerving.

We marveled at the scene before us and kept our own silences in the car. It was hard to ingest. We looked out the window and tried to comprehend the destruction outside. We held our breaths from the smell and wondered in quiet how anything could have survived.

It was then that we saw Marcel. He was running with a small yellow lab mix buddy. They ran, but were curious enough not to go far. Lacey coaxed the little blond one and had him eating from her hand. I started to leave food for Marcel, who seemed to want to run away rather than be leashed and rescued. And then Marcel decided to eat, and Lacey worked her magic, and soon he was on his way into the crate and ready to ride. It was unexpected and it was quite unplanned, but it was magical nonetheless.

When Marcel's owners called and we could finally declare theirs a match, I recounted the rescue...and then it hit me. He was the only dog we rescued in St. Bernard parish. We had finished rescue work for that day and were not on the lookout for animals when we came across him. It was almost as if the animals who WERE our mission that day--the ones who had lost their lives--were pointing us in Marcel's direction. Had we not gone to see them, we never would have discovered Marcel.

It is a matter of interpretation of course, but I'd like to believe that the animals were watching out for us and helping us to save the ones that could still be saved.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Marcel and Owner Matched!


IT'S A MATCH!

A few weeks ago, we rescued this beautiful lab, Marcel from the streets of St. Bernard Parish. He had tags, but was blocks from home and his home had been destroyed.

In hopes that his owner might return, we had signs placed on his house with my personal cell phone number on it, letting the owners know we'd rescued their dog. We put him on petfinder, contacted a few investigative rescue groups and posted his picture. Then we crossed our fingers and waited for a ray of hope.

That ray appeared tonight in a phone call. A woman who had been missing her beloved pet Marcel, called to ask me if I knew what happened to him. Of course I did; He was safe in a loving foster home in Louisiana, patiently waiting for his mama to come home.

My words were not hollow. I had lost sleep over this guy, wondering how we would ever track down his owner since his family's house was destroyed, the phone lines were dead and information on evacuees was hard to come by. I wanted badly to reunite him, because I knew he'd come from a good home, but couldn't imagine how we'd ever track down his owners.

When I was able to confirm that Marcel's owner was indeed, Marcel's owner, I said, "Ma'am, this is your dog. We have Marcel. We have your dog." For a fraction of second there was silence, and then the weeping began. This woman who had lost so much had just been given back a piece of her family. And that, folks, is why every part of this experience has been worth it.

Rest well tonight. Marcel is finally going home.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Rescued Animals to be Euthanized on Oct 15

After all the work we did in Louisiana, some of the rescued animals are going to be put down, regardless of the fact that the owners have not yet been found!

On October 15 (two days from now), all animals rescued in Hurricane Katrina who have not already been taken into foster care will become property of Louisiana. What this means is that any shelter (anywhere) who took an animal displaced by Katrina has the right to euthanize an animal on Oct. 15 if it chooses to do so--regardless of whether the animal's owners have been found. Many of the shelters animals were sent to are HI-KILL shelters, and will put these animals down because they don't have space. Many of the animals are going down because they are heartworm positive. In most cases, heartworm is treatable and an animal can live a normal existence.

For example: An animal rescued in New Orleans was sent to Gonzales. Gonzales then processed the animal and sent it to a hi-kill facility in Alabama. The Alabama shelter put the pet on Petfinder.com, but because of limited space decides that they will euthanize the animal. Since the agreement the shelters signed when taking the animals from Gonzales said that they only had to shelter the animals until Oct. 15, some will euthanize the rescued animals on that day, or shortly thereafter.

These pets owners have NOT YET BEEN FOUND! This is unfair and cruel.

So many of these animals are good, viable pets! There is a cocker spaniel right now sitting on death row in Alabama because the owner has not been matched to it (contact me if you can foster this dog). These are not vicious animals that are not adoptable. They are good family pets that once belonged to people and then lived through one heck of a storm. It would be crime now to see these animals put down after all they've gone through to make it.

All animals rescued were supposed to have been placed on Petfinder.com for THIRTY days so that the owners could be matched to them, but for many animals in hi-kill facilities, this will NOT be the case.

STOP THIS NOW!!

**The Pet Shootings

By now, many of you have heard the stories of the animals that were shot in various schools throughout St. Bernard Parish. These schools had been used as evacuation centers for St. Bernard residents who were awaiting emergency evacuation from the flooding. Evacuees brought their pets with them to these schools, expecting to take the furry members of their families with them upon evacuation. Sadly, this was not to be the case.

Evacuees were not allowed to take their pets when they evacuated. Many of us swear that we would lay down our own lives before we would leave without our pets, but those of us on our pedestals weren't there. We weren't forced to make unnatural decisions in the midst of a natural disaster. And moreover, we don't know the exact details of the forced evacuation. Until we do, I caution everyone to take a breath and wait to make a judgement until the entire story is revealed.

What we do know is that the animals were left in the schools, and that owners expected to be reunited with their pets at a later date. Evidence of this lies in the notes that adorn the chalkboards, entry ways and doors, and the food that lays out for them in the hallways of the schools. Instead of being evacuated and reunited, however, these pets were viciously shot and left to suffer, soon after their owners had left. The following story chronicles my visits to three schools in St. Bernard Parish, in which dogs, cats and birds were killed. These schools were: PGT Middle School, Sebastien Roy Elementary School and St. Bernard High School.

* * * * *
What strikes you first is not the sight of a dead animal, but the smell. After searching many homes and rescuing many animals, you learn to differentiate smells quickly. Smells of mold, sludge, sewer and rotting food are odors you get used to...and then there is the smell of death.

In each of the schools, blood and decay are ripe to the nose and the scent of death is unmistakeable. Walking through each hall and each classroom, you walk in search of animals you have not come to rescue, with only your nose to guide you. When the odor reaches your nose, the site that awaits you is one of true horror. There, lying only feet away is a furry animal, clearly somebody's pet, lying dead in a great pool of blood. It is so surreal, so unnatural, that you step closer, trying to make sense of such an unimaginable event, and you notice the little black holes in the belly, the legs, the side...Bullet holes.

It is a tragedy to find one animal shot inhumanely for any reason. To find 26 who were shot, maimed and left to die gruesome deaths, is an abhorrent catastrophe.

On one wall, a note reads "In this room are 6 adult dogs + 4 puppies. Please save them! Kit". Kit's note is an ominous one next to a closed door. Where there should be barking or snoring or even the dull whine of young pups, there is none. There is no sound. No sound at all.

A side door to this classroom is propped open by the corpse of an adult golden retriever. She lies there with her right front paw gingerly propped across a golden puppy and another small black dog, a daschund, lays at the pup's feet. All have been shot.

Across the room lies yet another daschund. The mind swirls, trying to comprehend how anyone could kill these animals. The argument that these animals were shot because they were vicious and uncontrollable is hard to make when you're staring at small, friendly breeds such as these.

On another level lies a small cocker spaniel mix. He and the pit mix with a blue harnass and tags who lies near him are still largely enshrined in a deep pool of blood. The blood is so thick that it is a sticky puddle just to walk through. Stick, stick, stick. You can feel it as you trudge by, making your way into yet another room filled with dead dogs. This next room has a pile of milkbones right in the center, another sign that owners expected to see their pets alive again.

There are dogs tied to the walls, and dogs lying on staircases. There are dogs who look like they've tried to escape and dogs who cowered in corners. And there are tags and collars and harnasses that tell you that these dogs were somebody's pets.

In another school, there are two cats lying in crates in a hallway. Both were shot, apparently in their crates and both have owner's names, phone numbers and addresses on them. Piles of black and gray fluff are all that remain in these crates that have become coffins, bearing the names "Fluffy" and "Tips".

Down the hall there is a poodle, a yellow lab, a pomeranian, a parrot, a rottweiler and several furry mixes. Some are tied. Some are covered in bugs. It is enough to make a grown woman cry, a grown woman who has seen dead and dying animals all week and still, she is rattled to her core.

A note on a hall wall in PGT Beauregard reads, "There is one very nice dog in here. Please do not shoot her. Please find her a good home. Her name is Angel."

Angel, we could not get to you in time, and could not save you from your suffering, but we know that you are safe now and have found a truly "good home". And I promise you that many of us will not rest until we find who did this and make sure that they can never do it again. From then on, we will try to make things safer for all your furry little brothers and sisters still on this earth.

* * * * *

These animals did not die humanely. We know that they were shot, and that their deaths were close enough in succession to suggest that there was more than one killer, and probably several. The bullet holes suggest that animals were shot in ways that would not lead to an immediate death, and that the animals probably suffered a great deal. We can also tell that they did not die of starvation by the piles of food left for them. A hallway in St. Bernard High School where many of the animals were shot have boxes of fruit loops, bags of chips and other snack foods strewn across it, uneaten. The multitude of animals suggests that the animals did not die of disease, or from attacks by other animals. The decay of their bodies suggested that the animals had been dead already for several weeks.

There were also gun casings at the scene. Unfortunately, by the time I first saw the animals (9/29), people had collected them as "souvenirs", therefore making the crime scene less powerful. One Humane Society (HSUS) volunteer wearing her bright yellow T-shirt told me that 'they' had collected them for souvenirs to show people, and produced a bullet casing in a ziploc bag. When I suggested that by doing so it destroyed the integrity of the crime scene and made the story less powerful in the media, she brushed me off. The gun casings were apparently police casings, and many people assumed that the police were behind the massacre, though this claim is as yet, unsubstaniated.

In these schools, room after room is filled with the same carnage. In all, I saw 26 animals shot (11 at PGT Beauregard, 6 at Sebastien Roy and 9 at St. Bernard High), all innocent victims of a needless tragedy. If you are outraged, or saddened, or sickened by this event, you are not alone...and you can help us bring justice and honor the furry little ones that were so viciously taken.

Pasado Safe Haven, an amazing rescue society based in Seattle, is now handling the investigation of these shootings. They are funding the necropsies of all the animals who were victims of these shootings, each of which cost nearly $500. Monetary donations for this cause can be given directly to their site (see links on left side of page or click on link below). They are also offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the people who have committed this crime: http://www.pasadosafehaven.org/NEWS/DOGSHOOTING/REWARD.htm

As well, we're hoping to find a way to enact stricter laws for people who maliciously harm animals. Keep checking this site to find out how you can help with this effort.

Do this for Angel, and for all the pets that were hurt in such horrific ways. Let's find a way to make sure this can never happen again.

(Pictures of the schools and the animal victims may be viewed by clicking the link "Cat's pictures" to the left. Be prepared for what you will see. It is difficult.)

Monday, October 10, 2005

Dogs In Flight photo


This image was in the Baltimore Sun. The plane is carrying nothing but animals that were rescued from the Gulf Region. Some of the dogs our group rescued were transported by this benefactor, in the same manner. For a dog lover, this is a picture of the way life is supposed to look.

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- The first major airlift of dogs from the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast left Louisiana on Sunday, carrying about 80 pets to new temporary homes in California.

The Continental Airlines flight from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was chartered for about $50,000 by Texas oil tycoon Boone Pickens and his wife, Madeleine, in a movement dubbed "Operation Pet Lift."

Some dogs were placed in cages in the cargo section while others rode in the passenger cabin, where they barked and wagged their tails.


Sunday, October 09, 2005

USE OF PHOTOS

I realize that images travel easily across the internet, so I have the following requests regarding use of my photos.

To use any photo I have listed, please:
-Contact me first
-make a donation toward our heartworm tests/treatment and spay/neutering costs for the animals we rescued
-credit me as the photography source when photo is used

Thank you.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

All Photos Now Online

All 745 photos I took during my trip to Lousiana (and the preparation for the trip) are now online. Every photo is accessible, so be careful which photo you choose.

The albums you may view are grouped by theme:

-Pets Rescued (by our team)
-Ones that Got Away
-Pet Rescue Team
-Camp Rite-Aid (where we lived and where our makeshift kennel was)
-Destruction in New Orleans (photos of the utter wasteland it has become)
-Animals at Gonzales (Lamar Dixon)
-YMCA (where our supplies were)
-The French Quarter (empty but still standing)
-Prison-New Orleans (complete with pics of our souvenirs from the penitentiary
-Donations in my garage
-X-Country road trip
-Shreveport, Louisiana
-Hospitable folks in Gonzales
-Lacey's-Nashville
-A couple of pics of Comet and I

There are four album containing dead animals. These photos are marked with a double asterisk (**), and are called:

-**Horror @ Beauregard Middle School
-**Horror @ Sebastien Roy Elemantary
-**Horror @ St. Bernard High School
-**Other Dead Animals

Friday, October 07, 2005

Rescue Success

Each time we fed, watered or rescued an animal, we spray painted the house it was in (or the house that the food and water (FW) drop was closest too. The messages were anything from "2 Dogs under house--FW 9/29" to "1 Cat Rescued 9/27--please call: 555-555-5555 (I used my own cell phone #). There were often other notes we would write, such as "DO NOT REMOVE-ANIMAL BEING SEDATED, 555-555-5555", or "Mama with 3 puppies--do NOT remove". These notes helped us in many ways, the best of which was helping an owner locate their pet after they were allowed to return to New Orleans.

Last weekend, a woman called my cell phone regarding a daschund we'd picked up. She had gotten my number from a house nearby and when were able to identify the dog and owner as an exact match, the daschund was returned to the very, very happy owner.

Unexpectedly, this same owner called me again today. She'd been allowed back into her neighborhood for a second visit today and a neighbor informed her that the SPCA had picked up one of her beagles. The owner called me because she thought I might know who picked up the beagle. Sadly, I did not. And worse, since the rescue group who picked up the animal had not been told to leave a phone # or forwarding information, this owner had no idea of how to find her lost pet. The options I gave her--seaching the www.petfinder.com database or going to the Lamar Dixon Equestrian Center in Gonzales, LA (outside Baton Rouge), were difficult options for her. She has no computer and is not internet savvy. She probably has limited transportation as most vehicles were destroyed in the flood. And worse, the HSUS has done such a poor job logging animals and matching owners, that I worry for anyone who has been told that their pet was sent to Gonzales. It was a huge clusterf*ck, and terribly managed. And quite honestly, the odds are slim that matches will be made if a dog or cat has no tags. It's heartbreaking.

So, while our group was small, our effort was huge. We are able to personally deliver news on where the animals were and who is fostering them. We have kept decent notes and photographed all the animals we've brought in. And when we say that we're committed to reuniting pets with owners, it isn't an empty promise.

*A note about the pet shootings photos

I have started to upload some of the photos of the pets that were shot in schools, after their owners were forced to evacuate. Some of the photos are very graphic in nature, and will be pretty disturbing to anyone choosing to view them. They are not intended to horrify, but rather to tell a story of a broken system, categoric guilt and the loss of loved ones. These pets belonged to people, people who were forced to leave their beloved pets in yet another political snafu.

After such carnage, it is our duty to make sure that this atrocity NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN. To do so, the people responsible for these killings must be brought to justice and punished in full. What they did is NOT OKAY and should never have happened, not even in an emergency situation. This was not an act of compassion, or even an uneducated idea of right v. wrong. This was murder, plain and simple.

All pictures and all blog notes that contain graphic detail will be marked with asterisks. One asterisk (*) for disturbing photos/stories, and two (**) for the most disturbing.

All photos in the collection are not disturbing. I took several with school banners, posters about kindness and humanity, one with a teddy bear lying on a barren school ground. I wanted to create the whole picture.

Our feelings about this outrage are personal, but our quest for justice must be united. PLEASE HELP me--HELP US--get the right people involved who will find the people that did this and tie their hands from ever being able to make such cruel decisions again.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Our Small But Powerful Team

Eric (www.ericsdogblog.com): Eric was the leader of our renegade rescue group. Had I not come across him, my experience would not have been the same. He fielded a zillion calls a day from people who were trying to locate their pets and wanting us to go rescue them. He spent alot of his own money to finance this effort and much of his time handling logistics. He was the lynchpin of our effort, and undoubtedly we could not have accomplished all we did without him. [Make me a sandwich, bitch!]

Billy: Billy was Eric's buddy from Baltimore, and the two of them were absolute polar opposites. Billy's wacky sense of humor and self-depricating manner could crack you up when you needed it most. He was like a character from a 70s movie, but he was the real thing. And you've gotta give it to a guy who can sleep the night away on top of a Budget rentral truck! That's quite a feat!

Lisa (www.helpthecritters.blogspot.com): Lisa was one wonderful surprise after another. Blonde and petite, you'd never guess this girl was as mighty as she was. But this girl could kick some butt. After volunteering for kennel duty on one of the early days, she put our entire camp in ship shape condition. And the sight of her pretty little blond self driving up in Eric's big old moving truck one day (after Lacey had lassoed one of our ornieriest critters --and we'd all run several blocks), was simply fabulous. [Girls kicking butt and taking names (or pets!)] Seriously though, Lisa was much tougher and capable than you might have thought at first glance, and she was a true joy to be around.

Lacey: Queen of the Lasso (aka dog catchpole, homemade or otherwise), driver extraordinaire, swamp wader, fearless of bridges with no mid section, and just plain gutsy, gutsy, gutsy...Lacey is a woman whose talents in pet rescue go unmatched. She put the men to shame (I kid you not) and truly was one of the finest pet rescuers I'd seen. She had a way with animals, even the scariest of them, and she wasted no time in getting them. Without her, we never would have had the success we did in terms of sheer rescue. And that 38 of hers made us all feel safe even in the most unsafe situations. And for anyone with a soft spot for pit bulls, this girl would warm your heart. She personally saved the lives of a bunch who never would have had a fighting chance if it weren't for her.

Me (www.savethepetskatrinarescue.blogspot.com)
__________
Matt was also a part of the rescue effort. He went out with Lacey every day except for a couple that his job got in the way of. Matt is an Englishman in New Orleans...who was our navigator/map reader/sanity checker extraordinaire. Oh, and he is 100% a real man!

Feeling Blue

This morning was a tough one. The nightmares were back in force last night, and I woke up feeling melancholy, frustrated and just plain sad.

As I walked Comet around the block, I felt like I was in a trance. At one point, I looked up at one of the homes I was passing. The neighborhood is residential and could easily have passed for one in the New Orleans neighborhood of Lake View. For a flicker of a second, I thought it strange not to see the high-water mark on the house before me. When it registered that this was California and not New Orleans, it occurred to me that this is how those neighborhoods in New Orleans must have looked before the storm hit, before the floods changed the residents forever.

As I walked along, I realized that I was listening for sounds of barking, meowing and chirping. I've become accustomed to listening to that silence, knowing that I will hear nothing, but hoping that I will. At 5:30 am, there is little movement on the street, but even the slightest ruffle of a leave causes me to spin around in hopes of seeing a dog scurrying nearby. Here, there are no tin cake pans filled with water, or bright plastic dishes with food because these animals are safe and loved and cared for. It's strange, but I miss that. I miss being able to give an abandoned pet some relief after a month of trauma and confusion. I miss coaxing and baiting a scared animal into a crate, knowing that he's got a better chance of being reunited with his owner by coming with me than staying another night on the streets.

And though I know how many furry lives we saved, I am haunted by the number we could not get to, and frustrated by the number that remain trapped today. A large part of me wants to turn right around and dive back into the wasteland of New Orleans, and truthfully, I'm not sure why I haven't done just that.

Having a simple conversation is tough. I have so many other things running through my brain that I find myself not being able to listen to people. I'm not ready, I guess. I feel raw and inside out, and I don't want to minimalize my experience by stepping it down to smalltalk. It doesn't seem fair.

Going through all the pictures last night was good for me, but I don't think I've even begun to ingest the whole of this experience. At the same time, I started to notice what stories the pictures are telling. I took the photos and the video with the idea that stories as powerful as these didn't need a writer, they needed a listener. And when I watched and observed and listened last night, those stories began to emerge. For me, I think this will be part of the healing process. I was so busy, so engaged and so stressed in New Orleans that I didn't have time to really take in the situation around me. In some ways it felt like being in the middle of M*A*S*H. Everything is an emergency and time is always running out.

Our group was small, but we had a strong core group. Every day, new people that came to help rescue, take care of the dogs in the kennel (who had been rescued days before) and to bring food or water. There were also kind samaritans who walked up and handed us $20 just for doing what were were doing. It was amazing.

The core group of us awoke every day at 6:30 and immediately began to walk, feed, and water the animals. We also cleaned poopy crates, shampooed sodden animals, applied flea and other medicines, and checked on animals being treated at the vet. This was usually done before any of us brushed our teeth, changed our clothes or had morning coffee. Around 9 am we would start the crazy process of mapping out addresses and planning which rescues would be attempted that day. Long days of rescuing ensued. Some addreses we checked on would yield empty houses where we might simply leave food and water. Some houses had to be broken into in search of an abandoned dog, cat or goat (yes, we were called out to check on one!). Sometimes we simply came across packs of animals on the street, some willing to come with us, others running away the minute we hopped out of the car. There were cases of live animals still chained to porches, ladders and fences and sad stories of animals who had not managed to escape the high flood waters. There were just so many stories it is hard to imagine how we will ever be able to chronicle them all.

We rescued every night until darkness set in, and then we hightailed it out of the city. It was not a safe place to be after dark. In the more ravaged areas, there were unsavory folks hiding out and our last wish was to come across one. After returning to our safe little kennel/tent site (aka "CAMP RITE-AID"...a little green lot between a Rite-Aid and a 24-hour bar called, "The Pit Stop" in Jefferson Parish), the core group (Eric, Billy, Lisa, Lacey and I) would walk dogs, feed, water, and clean, and then around 10:30 we'd all collapse...sometimes in chairs with rolls of paper towels in our arms (Eric), sometimes next to a dog with diarrhea who liked to eat his own poop (Lisa), sometimes at the dinner table after the first margarita and before the spinach dip (Me). Imagine why I'm tired now.

All in all, it was one of the very best experiences of my life. I learned so much and was part of something really special. We saved many animal lives and brought rays of hope into the lives of people who thought they'd lost everything. It was something that you just can't put a price on.

PHOTOS ONLINE NOW

Some of the photos I took in Lousiana are now online. The animals that we (our little 'Renegade Rescue' group) rescued are listed in an album under "PETS RESCUED". Another album entitled "Animals at Gonzales" are a sampling of the pets rescued and sent on to the Lamar Dixon Equestrian Center in Gonzales, Lousiana.

At this time, I have not posted any dead animal pictures, nor are there any photos that are disturbing to the weak stomached crowd.

Click this link to see the photos: http://photos.yahoo.com/cometsmommy

Welcome to my (new) blog!

I'm using this site because I think it's going to be easier to manipulate than the one on MySpace.

Stay tuned for new updates regarding the Katrina rescue trip!

C