Chapter 9 - The best thing that ever happened...
October 2 -October 31, 2005
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As Bobby Alberti and his sisters Fran and Nancy walked among the stalls at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center, their hopes of finding Rover began to fade. The search seemed to take forever because there were so many dogs … as many as three to four cages in every stall, and hundreds of stalls. Fran Alberti couldn’t help notice how forlorn the dogs looked. Some were emaciated; others had skin diseases. Many dogs looked a lot like Rover. Bobby and his sisters would look closer for the white chest with a black spot and the telltale white on the back paws. He was not to be found.
Fran remembered saying a prayer just before a woman by the name of Carla approached them. Carla took the two to see another woman named Sara. Sara worked for the Humane Society of the United States. She promised Bobby she’d find his dog within a few hours, and she came through. As it turned out Rover had been shipped to the Humane Society of Missouri and had been placed in a foster home.
Could Bobby come and get him? Of course he wanted to. But, Bobby had lost everything in the storm. He couldn’t afford the plane fare, and he didn’t feel well enough to drive. A day later, Bobby and Fran got a call from HSMO. It would fly Fran and Bobby up to St. Louis and then also pay to have Rover flown back with them.
On Sunday, October 2, Fran and Bobby were driven to the HSMO facilities and escorted into a room. Suddenly there was Rover at the door.
The two stared at each other for a moment, each not quite believing they were together again. Then Rover began to wag his tail. He started to whine. Then he jumped on Bobby with such force that the two hit the wall.
"Oh, I got you back. I never thought I would get you back,” Bobby exclaimed.
The two went across the street for a walk and Bobby put Rover through his paces. "Sit Rover. Roll over.” Rover obeyed every command although he could hardly contain his excitement as he whined and panted.
On the following day, HSMO invited the press to see Rover and Bobby. While Rover performed more tricks, the Humane Society served up a cake. It featured a dog made of chocolate and a white dog bone with Rover’s name on it. While everyone was distracted for a moment, Rover darn near got a lick of his cake. Bobby rescued it just in time.
Their story ran on almost every local television station and on the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Associated Press sent a reporter as well, and its story was picked up by newspapers across the nation.
Bobby and Rover were famous for a day. But the two had no interest in basking in the glory. They just wanted to get home again and rebuild their lives together.
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Laura Maloney did not return to the Louisiana SPCA’s shelter in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward until weeks after the hurricane. She saw no need, once she learned that the facility had been underwater and little could be salvaged. But on the day she did return, she brought a video camera. Her lense captured a stark scene, a moonscape. The microphone picked up the sound of her shoes crunching broken earth, building materials, and concrete, as well as her astonishment as she said again and again, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
What the video couldn’t capture was the smell… a musty, moldy odor that at times forced Maloney and other staff members to cover their noses and mouths with a cloth. Their shelter, a home for thousands of pets for half a century, could not be restored. They would have to start from scratch.
And all this would have to take place as the depleted Louisiana SPCA staff was still trying to rescue animals in their devastated city. It was much like fixing a car engine while the car was still moving, Maloney thought.
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On October 15, the SPCA found its new New Orleans home and cut a deal with its owner, reopening a temporary shelter two weeks later at a former coffee warehouse in the Algiers section, a few miles east of downtown. That presented new challenges. The roof of the warehouse had been damaged in the hurricane and the facility flooded when it rained. As animals began arriving, the dogs were housed in tents and the cats were kept in the warehouse with space heaters to keep them warm. The administration set up shop in a couple of double-wide trailers on the parking lot.
By this time, six weeks after Katrina, Maloney and her staff were exhausted. Few had taken even one day off. An organization that once operated with 65 workers had been built back to less than half-strength and was getting by thanks to the help of humane officers from other parts of the nation. An unknown number of animals still roamed the streets of New Orleans. Some said many thousands; others believed it was far less.
Maloney was finding that some rescuers were posing as workers for the Louisiana SPCA to get into devastated neighborhoods. Once beyond the police lines, they tarnished the organization’s good name by breaking into houses without the homeowner’s permission or “rescuing” pets from homes or yards where the owners had already returned.
Yet for all the daily chaos, Maloney could see sunshine over the horizon. As she put it in a message on the organization’s website: “We didn’t have to create a pie chart for community leaders to illustrate our animal overpopulation problem. The sadness of seeing so many animals’ lives in need of immediate rescue and shelter was vivid, urgent and unforgettable. The animals literally spoke for us …” And more than ever, Maloney was certain their needs were going to be met.
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Julie Parks, the director of operations for the Humane Society of Southern Mississippi, made what sounded like a startling observation about Hurricane Katrina. The storm, she said, may have been the best thing that ever happened to animals in her community. The hurricane had taken the lives of 23 animals when floodwater inundated the organization’s antiquated shelter. It had destroyed the homes of many staff members, some of whom quit their jobs and left the community. It left many pets without homes. Some of them starved, others were left to wander the streets for weeks until they were rescued.
And yet it’s easy to see what Parks meant. Working seven days a week and 16 to 20 hours a day under the direction of Tara High, the HSSM staff began putting their shelter operation back together piece by piece. Working the phones and the internet, High forged alliances with shelters and other humane organizations throughout the nation. Together they reactivated the “Love Train” – a program that allowed HSSM to ship adoptable pets to shelters where demand was highest.
The impact has been both rapid and stunning. Before Katrina, HSSM workers were euthanizing more than 72 percent of all the animals taken into the shelter. Now the rate is less than 25 percent. In almost every case, those animals have been considered either too aggressive or too sick to be adopted.
The disaster also spawned renewed interest in spay and neuter programs for which High got funding from the Humane Society of the United States and other organizations. In the months after Katrina, shelter vets spayed and neutered more than a thousand dogs and cats at no cost to their owners.
As donations and support began to build, the staff began to look forward to opening a brand new shelter in a better part of town. Volunteers began to return to help. New staff members were hired, including a former employee, Donna Parker. During the storm, Parker had been trapped in her attic with her two dogs not knowing from one moment to the next whether she would live or die.
Parker told Parks that she had been reborn that day. She was leaving her higher paying position with the U.S. Postal Service and taking a job with HSSM. She had found her calling.
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Stephanie Engle’s heart had ached as she watched the television coverage of Hurricane Katrina. As a former member of the Illinois National Guard, she was used to stepping in during tough times — not being an idle observer. However, as a single mom, her first obligation was to her five-year-old son, Aaron. She couldn’t just pack her bags and head to the Gulf Coast. But when a co-worker talked about the rescued animals that would be coming to St. Louis, needing foster homes, Engle knew that this was a way that she could help.
Late in September, Engle drove across the Mississippi River to an orientation session at the headquarters of the Humane Society of Missouri. She sat with dozens of other people who were interested in providing homes for the 150 animals that were being brought back from Mississippi. In all, 1,400 St. Louis families had volunteered to be foster parents and Engle was among the chosen.
Engle loved animals. She had three cats at home, but no dogs. Now she and her son were settled in to a new house, with a big back yard, and she was longing for a dog. It was the perfect time to foster a dog that needed a loving family.
At the end of October, Engle headed back to St. Louis. The Katrina animals had arrived, and all those who had been accepted as foster families were asked to come to HSMO to pick up their dog or cat. Aaron stayed at home. Engle didn’t want him upset by the sight of so many needy animals. And she was worried that he might see a dog that he wanted, but that was going home with someone else. When she walked in the door, she was immediately grateful that she’d left him behind.
The room was filled with people, rushing from one cage to the next, signing up for the dog or cat that they wanted to take home. Engle was drawn to a bulldog, but he wasn’t ready to go home. He needed more medical care before he could be released. But Engle wasn’t going home with an empty crate. As she looked around the room, longing to connect with one of the homeless dogs, an HSMO staff member approached her. A chocolate lab, with chemical burns all over her body from swimming for her life in contaminated water, was lying in her cage, unclaimed. Engle looked into the lab’s eyes and made her decision. She was going home with her.
Getting home wasn’t as easy as she anticipated. First, the dog’s crate wouldn’t fit in her car. After switching out the crate for a smaller one, she still couldn’t make it fit. Something had to go — so the crate was left behind, and the dog traveled home in the back seat, quiet throughout the drive. Engle alternately talked to the lab and to herself. She wondered about its owners. What were they like? Where were they? Were they trying to find their dog? She kept reminding herself that she and Aaron couldn’t get too attached. They were only a foster family. If the original owners claimed the dog within three months, they had to return her.
The lab got a home and a name. By the second day, Cocoa was a member of the family. Engle was moved by Cocoa’s apparent gratitude for their love. But she frequently reminded Aaron — and herself — that they wanted Cocoa’s family to find her and take her home. Read the Epilogue.
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