Letter from Dr. Ena

Dear Friends,

It’s been more than a month since we returned from Louisiana.

I wanted to thank our wonderfully understanding clients, and give you a look at our trip. Thank you all so much for the outpouring of support. Your support not only helped us pay for the trip, but the realization that you were all behind us, energized us. We were deeply touched by your generosity, understanding, patience, good thoughts and on this journey.

It was for me a learning experience of a lifetime. Offering help to the victims of a disaster was a rich and yet trying experience. Our desire to help, and the images on CNN did not prepare us for the scope of the tragedy we witnessed on the ground. The pressure tested our friendships and shook our belief in the systems and ourselves. I learned that my training as a veterinarian and a business owner, and the sense of urgency we felt in trying to make a difference in an emergency environment, led me to lack patience and feel frustrated with the roadblocks that seemed erected within the governmental structures. My definition of an emergency precluded me from having patience to understand meetings that did not appear to result in sound decisions. I learned that in a disaster, it is friends and neighbors who were the first to help each other.

Understanding that we were not prepared for the scope of this disaster, I am hopeful that lessons are learned. I hope that changes are made which will lead to better leadership, a clear chain of command, rapid communication, and deployment of animal handlers competent in coordinating professionals and volunteers to rapidly provide basic care to pets and citizens in the future. Witnessing chaos, and absence of a well articulated or enacted emergency plan, made me realize that we need to have our own emergency response plans for ourselves, our own pets, and our neighbors. I learned the importance of having some basic supplies on hand and the need of having our pets permanently identified with tags, or better yet microchipped. It is clear that on a state of emergency, we will have to help each other.

We were moved by people we met on this trip from across the US and Canada. So many events and impressions formed in one week that I am finding it difficult to remember all the names now, and match them with the places they individually came from. I remember meeting pet lovers from Colorado, Michigan, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Canada. I ran into volunteering veterinarians, veterinary technicians, rescuers, and shelter workers. Helpful marshalls, sheriffs, and our military patrolling a closed New Orleans, waved us in. They made us feel safe, and worked with us to get into homes to get pets out. Crews of electricians repairing the fallen power lines, kept track of the homes in which they heard pets, and led us to them. It was heart warming and amazing to see the number of decent people and pet lovers we have in this country.

We hope that the dogs we removed from abandoned houses are reunited with their rightful owners, because knowing that we helped someone regain a beloved family member, will have made the trip worthwhile. We joined veterinary students, and hundreds of volunteers from Baton Rouge, at the Parker Center, which housed over 1200 pets. We helped clean, feed, isolate the contagious, and treat the ill at a triage center. We helped assess and transport those in need of more intense care to the teaching hospital. I met Dr. Truman, a local veterinarian, who felt so fortunate that her house and hospital in Metairie got spared, that she found the energy to split her time both volunteering and running her own hospital. I don't know how she did it. We meant to take pictures, but unfortunately, we found ourselves with little time or energy to do so.

We then found ourselves in Lamar Dixon, a shelter in Gonzales managed by the Humane Society of the United States. We again fed, cared for and medicated the mainly the large (so called aggressive) dogs, whom novice volunteers would have a hard time handling.

We spent the last two days at Camp Compassion in Algiers. Julian met Eric Rice and Billy, (ericsdogblog.com) at an HSUS morning meeting. Eric led us to a YMCA in Algiers. There two tough no-nonsense ladies, one from Florida whose profession I don't recall, and a lawyer from New York, worked non-stop for over two weeks. In an abandoned, hot and humid city, providing the basics of life for these animals--maintaining basic sanity, feeding, watering and keeping cool a dozen dogs without running water and power, was challenging. They rescued, fed, watered, kept clean and cool, and arranged transportation for over 350 pets. There were many pieces to rescuing, and among the most challenging was keeping the animals cool in a hot humid environment. The animals were housed under tents, and portable crates were moved with the movement of the sun into the shade. We were only there for two days. My most memorable experience was getting gasoline for the generator that powered the fans keeping the rescued dogs cool. We had less than an hour of gasoline left, it was several hours before sundown, our ice was gone and the heat and humidity were stifling. We waved a utility man passing by but unfortunately he did not have the right fuel mixture for our generator. God bless him; he found someone else who had the right mixture and brought the fuel to power the generators until that evening. The other challenge was coordinating sites to move the dogs to, arranging transportation, and attempting to keep records of the addresses from which the pets were removed. These women, Eric, and many others did it for weeks, and are still on the ground evacuating.

Hurricane Katrina no longer captures our attention as much as it did a month ago, as we are all returning to our lives. I believe that the only way the pets rescued in Louisiana can survive, is if they can be held in shelters across the country, while their families resettle and have an opportunity to find them. Louisiana pets are being given a month, before they are made available for foster care and adoption. As many are aware, Los Angeles shelters generally hold adoptable pets for one week, before they are euthanized.

Many of our clients expressed a desire to help. Many of you donated financially to worthy charities once, twice or more. Everyone contributed to saving these lives. Of course, more help is needed. Those of you who have a spot in your homes, and your hearts, and have financial and emotional resources to care for a pet, and are looking for unconditional love, can find it at a local shelter. If instead of purchasing a fresh, perfect puppy from the classified ads, or a pet store, you adopt an existing one, you will not only gain a forever grateful friend, but you will be buying space and time at the shelter, and giving a chance to live to a Louisiana pet. Those who have pets can help most greatly by getting them spayed and neutered. The act of never breeding your new companion will have the most profound effect long term. I am proud that nine out of ten of my clients, are true pet lovers, and are aware of the profound pet surplus that leads to killing of thousands of pets in shelters.

Those of you excited to breed your companion-- to create just one litter of cute sweet and fresh puppies and kittens, either for the kids to experience the joy of birth, or because you want to claim your right to breed, or sell the puppies--please research and educate yourselves on what it really takes to create a healthy being, and please do what you can not to contribute to the pet surplus, and consequently the killing.

With deep appreciation
Dr. Ena

 

Watch this heart-rending Katrina video

Photos from our trip Departing from LAX...

Baton Rouge from the air...

Baton Rouge...

LSU and Parker...

Lamar Dixon...

New Arrivals...

Go to Top of Page