Animals Are STILL Being Rescued In NO LA!

yeah! :)



Animal rescuer Suzanne Keeys, from Cary, N.C, carries a cat down from an attic as Mark Messenger, from Orlando, Fla., watches in New Orleans, La., Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005. Animal rescuers continue to collect and care for animals abandoned and suffering in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath..(AP Photo/Don Ryan)



Animal rescuer Mark Messenger, from Orlando, Fla., comforts a sharpei dog collected from under the house in the background in New Orleans, La., Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005. Animal rescuers continue to collect and care for animals abandoned and suffering in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath.(AP Photo/Don Ryan)

a lot of the dogs coming out of that area are infected with leptospirosis...which can be passed on to humans.

Are they euthanizing them? :(

saving the animals.

as those working Lamar-Dixon, where the evacuated animals are taken.

The US Human Society, on the other hand, ought to be sued for the terrible way it handled the whole situation. Many owners have come forward to reclaim animals, only to be told that no one knows where there animal is. It could be in some home in Massachusetts, or it could have been euthanized. The Human Society lost my support after I saw first hand how they mishandled this crisis.

Again, the volunteers are the heroes. The paid officials of the Human Society should be drawn and quartered for their mishandling of this crisis. The only thing they know how to do is take donations and pay lobbyists.

I handled animals at Lamar-Dixon in Gonzales, LA after they were rescued from NOLA. And my son did, too.

I've never heard of leptospirosis. Time to do a google search.

For humans symptoms of leptospirosis include high fever, severe headache, chills, muscle aches, and vomiting, and may include jaundice (yellow skin and eyes), red eyes, abdominal pain, diarrhea, or a rash. If the disease is not treated, the patient could develop kidney damage, meningitis (inflammation of the membrane around the brain and spinal cord), liver failure, and respiratory distress. In rare cases death occurs.

For dogs the symptoms are fever, joint pain, and general malaise which can last up to a week. The organism settles in the kidneys and begins to reproduce, leading to further inflammation and then kidney failure. Depending on the type of leptospire involved, other organ failure (especially liver) can be expected as well.

Biggest downer is that even if a dog survives the infection, he will always be a carrier capable of infecting other animals and people through his urine.

sent to kill shelters, when the shelters who received the animals were supposed to promise to be no-kill.

I hate to be a downer, I really do, but the Humane Society lost my support during the aftermath of Katrina for their terrible handling of the animal crisis in NOLA. Specifically, many of the animals being harbored (if that's what you want to call it) at Lamar Dixon in Gonzales could have been fostered out to local people. Instead, they were sent out to shelters around the US, where their owners will never find them.

Indeed, some of the Yorkies that were rescued have shown up on a "Yorkie Rescue" website being sold for $400. This could have been avoided by allowing locals, who lined up at the Gonzales shelter, to foster these animals until the owners could claim them.

There are many stories of desperate owners now trying to locate their pets, only to be told by the Human Society that "we have no idea where your animal is. It should be here, but it's not, and we have no record of it being moved."

Anyone who offered to foster Katrina pets at Lamar Dixon was treated like a suspicious criminal. I live about an hour north of NOLA. I would have taken three or four dogs, filled out any forms necessary and provided a valid ID, but Humane Society officials knew what was "best," and turned away (with an elitist, assholish attitude) ANYONE offering to help at Lamar-Dixon.

The saddest part of this is that animals are being taken from NOLA to Lamar-Dixon, where they are put in cages in horse stalls. On the day I was there, the temperature outside was 100 degrees. Under the tin roof of the horse barns, the heat was brutal.

There was no identification system in place for owners to locate their pets. I saw many desperate faces walking through the barns, looking for little Fifi or Fido, only to find out that their dogs had been shipped to some shelter in Los Angeles--which was later identified as a kill-shelter.

It's a fucking disgrace the way animals have been treated through this mess. I gave up on trying to help a Katrina animal that had been rescued in NOLA. Instead, I rescued a Mississippi Katrina animal from an owner who couldn't care for him.

Disgraceful. It's the only way I can describe the way the HSUS handled the animals in Gonzales. Those precious dogs and cats made it through weeks of surviving on their own after Katrina, only to be brought in to a place that would ship them off to possible euthanasia.

Disgraceful.

omg Maddy! What you are saying is horrendous! I will write and scream and rant to the HSUS until I pass out over this!! :grr: :mad: :cry:

I can not even imagine why petfinders still has them on their rescue page. I need to find out now!

HSUS and PETA.

You might get a surprise.

Seriously, I can tell you with no hesitation that PETA was NOWHERE to be found at Lamar-Dixon.

The volunteers on the ground caring for the animals at Lamar Dixon were people who showed up to lend a helping hand. The HSUS "executives" sat under a canopy with ice chests and fans blowing on them, acting like bureaucratic assholes.

The people to be thanked are folks like me--people who showed up to help out because they cared about the animals and nothing else. The HSUS knows how to take your money, but they sure as hell don't know how to spend it on the very creatures they are supposed to care for. I say this with knowledge that all of the food, water, crates, etc at Lamar Dixon were donated by the public.

WTF does the Humane Society do with their donations? I assume they pay lobbyists and executives. There was no evidence on the ground at Lamar Dixon that the money was being used to help the pets, since all food, etc. and labor was donated.

I guess donations to the HSUS are spent on hotel rooms and meals for lobbyists and executives--the executives had hotel rooms in Gonzales and Baton Rouge. The volunteers either slept in the barns with the animals or in tents on the grounds of Lamar Dixon.

It was disgraceful.

on the LSU rescue page are now lost and now one knows where they are.

Did you know that the Humane Society so poorly monitored the animals at Lamar Dixon that MANY MANY MANY were stolen? This could have been avoided, had they allowed animals to be fostered and kept records of which animal went out with whom.

I talked to a man who was heart sick. He had left two teacup chihuahuas in the care of the Humane Society at Lamar Dixon. I helped him as he frantically searched for his chihuahuas--and this was only several days after Katrina. They were no where to be found. So slobbily kept were the Humane Society's records at Lamar Dixon that the paperwork SAID the animals were there. They weren't, though. Either they had been shipped out or stolen.

Like I said, DISGRACEFUL.

I tell you what. If it ever comes a day that I am forcefully evacuated from my home, I well tell whomever is in charge, either my animals accompany me or you can fuck yourself.

I've seen the travesty that is the Human Society in action, on the ground. They suck.

from our spca...microchipping your animals to make sure they can get back to you. Our shelter automatically does it on all animals they adopt out. If you bring an animal in, you can get it done for $15, which is a heck of a lot less than vets charge, and this weekend they're doing a chip clinic where you can have it done for $10. All shelters have chip readers and the Avid reader will register any brand of chip so they can't say they don't have the equipment. (Avid GAVE chip readers to every spca and shelter)

With the chip, you have a very good chance of being reunited if you should be separated from your pets.

And that's a great suggestion.

The problem at Lamar Dixon is that even animals that were microchipped were missing. And this is because the Humane Society kept such sloppy records.

What the HS should have done was kept records at their desk of the barn number/stall number of every animal that entered, so that owners could be told, when they checked at the desk, where to go find their animal. But the HS didn't do that. They just threw animals into whichever stall had empty spaces. So, imagine being an owner, checking in to find your animal, and being told, "There's the seven barns, each with 200 stalls. Knock yourself out."

I am sorry to go on and on about this, but I have never seen such an ill-prepared and managed operation in my LIFE.

Did I mention that my son and I saved a young thoroughbred horse's life? It was lying on the ground in its stall, gasping for air. It's hind legs were twisted up and mashed against the stall wall, so that it couldn't get up. We tried to find someone in the barn to help us get the horse up...no one was around. So, not knowing the temperment of the horse, my son and I went into the stall, and I alone dragged the young horse away from the stall wall, my son untangled his legs, and I helped the sweet thing up. And I'm just a volunteer who happened by.

Oh, and I saw a cat panting. I called the barn supervisor, a paid HSUS official, and told her that the cat was about to give birth. She just shrugged me off without going to look at the cat, and said that the cat was panting because of the heat. An hour later, I checked in on the cat. She had two kittens in the cage with her and more on the way.

I won't go on and on about the conditions at Lamar-Dixon. The volunteers did the best they could, but they were overworked, considering the number of animals they were caring for.

The most heart breaking thing I saw was a young sheltie, who obviously had been used to air-conditioned couch life, dying on the floor of a crate in the heat. It was so sad to me, because he could have been fostered to a loving family and his life saved.

BTW, Lamar Dixon did indeed euthanize animals. They won't tell you this. And if you call and ask them if they did, they will tell you that they didn't. But they did--and also many animals died in the heat in those stalls.

I hope that someone else manages animal rescue if ever the time comes that it's needed in the wake of another disaster. What I saw at Lamar Dixon still turns my stomach.