Posted on 09/03/2006 12:07:16 PM PDT by kennedy
Tiffany Madura keeps Hope inside. The chubby black cocker spaniel enthusiastically defends her oversized chew toy and flops onto a dog bed in the living room. But the two-acre fenced yard outside the Austin ranch-style house is off-limits for playtime. "I'm afraid someone might take her away," Madura says nervously.
That someone would be Shalanda Augillard, who is working as hard as she can to pry Hope from Madura. When the dog lived with her just outside of New Orleans, she claims, its name was Jazz. "There is not one ounce of doubt in my mind that this is the same dog," says Susan Philips, Augillard's lawyer.
Whether Hope is Jazz — or vice versa — is the pivot point of a lawsuit Augillard has filed demanding the return of the family pet she says disappeared in the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina. Madura, who adopted Hope from an Austin organization that rescued the dog in the storm's aftermath, is fighting tooth and nail to keep the spaniel. Nearly a half-dozen lawyers are now involved. Medical records have been parsed; DNA samples have been analyzed.
While cleanup efforts continue in New Orleans a year after Katrina roared ashore, emotional debris from one part of the disaster lingers. Some two dozen lawsuits have been filed across the country claiming adoptive families are keeping dogs that rightfully belong back with their Louisiana owners. Four have been filed in Texas.
In one sense, the pet disputes are a simple reminder that, a year later, the animal rescue effort has been at best incomplete. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 animals were collected from the splintered and sodden remains of the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history. Yet very few of those — 10 to 25 percent — have been reunited with their original Louisiana owners.
The lawsuits are also jarring because each of the parties at one time basked in national sympathy and admiration: the frazzled-yet-dignified residents of New Orleans; the selfless rescuers risking their lives for helpless animals; the compassionate foster families opening their homes to sick and injured pets. Now those stereotypes are fraying under closer scrutiny.
While the majority of volunteers who poured into New Orleans to save displaced animals were well-intentioned, the legal clashes illustrate that some did more harm than good. "They were just the same as looters," says Ceily Trog, who has run the animal shelter in hard-hit St. Bernard Parish for 18 years. "They came in and stole our property. We needed help. And instead we got a kick in the ass."
The tug of war over the pets has also scraped open a cultural sore spot. Many of the dogs that showed up at shelters had serious medical problems. In several of the lawsuits, adopters have asserted that the animals were so poorly cared for prior to the hurricane that sending them back would be tantamount to abuse. Because the original owners were largely inner-city African Americans, and the majority of rescuers were white suburbanites, a corrosive whiff of racism has tarnished some of the rescue narrative's heroic shine.
The disputes "generally involve the movement of dogs from poorer, black, less-educated owners to richer, whiter, more educated people who improperly claim to be the new owners," says Steve Wise, a Boston animal-rights lawyer involved in several of the lawsuits. "The argument that the dogs have been abused is, at its heart, an argument about class and racism."
With so many humans still suffering Katrina's consequences, dog fights may seem frivolous. Yet recent natural disasters have demonstrated that people forced to choose between remaining with their pets and fleeing without them will often stay, imperiling themselves and rescuers. Last month Congress passed laws requiring local governments to include animals in disaster-pre- paredness plans. Texas has already begun training volunteers how to respond to the next natural catastrophe.
Last year, no such plan existed. So like hundreds of other animal lovers who felt compelled to respond to Katrina's epic destruction, Eric Rice simply jumped in his car and drove to New Orleans from Maryland. He spent the next month cruising the streets looking for displaced pets, catching sleep in the back of a rental truck.
"Every hour you weren't working, animals were dying," he recalls. "They were drowning, hung up on poles, barely walking, trapped for days without food or water."
A surprising number of animals were reportedly killed in days following the storm, possibly by overwhelmed law enforcement authorities. Pasado's Safe Haven , a Washington State-based rescue organization, documented 33 dogs shot to death at schools in St. Bernard Parish, one of several such reported incidents.
There's no evidence volunteer rescuers killed found pets. But in part because of their sheer number and passion, the animal roundup operation established in the days following Katrina's landfall quickly became chaotic.
Although control of the operation officially fell to the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, much of work was effectively ceded to private organizations, led by the Humane Society of the United States, which set up a large shelter at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales, 60 miles outside of New Orleans. In the days following the disaster, many other groups also established their own, unofficial headquarters and dispatched squads of people into the streets.
At the height of the operation, between 5,000 and 10,000 volunteers were scrambling to collect displaced animals, estimates Wayne Pacelle, executive director of national Humane Society. Unlike responders saving humans, the pet-savers often were out on their own, with little training or supervision.
"Because there was effectively no controlling agency, you had lots of people who had their own ideas and who were answering to their own masters," he says. Turf battles were common.
Observers say most rescuers acted honorably. But it is now apparent that plenty of rescues did not go right.
Even well-inten- tioned volunteers could be more passionate than helpful. Mimi Hunley, a Louisiana assistant attorney general working on pet disputes arising from the hurricane, recalls a French Quarter couple whose dog was "rescued" from their front yard while they were home. They haven't seen it since. Trog remembers volunteers breaking into a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer to remove a pet cat.
"It got to the point where some of these people were rescuing animals that didn't need to be rescued," she says. "It's like they became addicted to it."
State officials initially ordered rescued pets to remain in Louisiana, but Lamar-Dixon's owners soon capped the number of dogs that could be kept at the site. "We either had to suspend rescue operations or start sending them out of state," Pacelle says.
Hundreds of local shelters and rescue organizations across the country opened their kennels to the exodus. From there, most of the pets filtered into foster families on the premise that they were to be cared for until they could be returned to their owners or adopted permanently sometime in the indefinite future.
A vast online pet-reunification effort sprung up, again propelled by unofficial volunteers. According to local agreements formalized by the Humane Society and state agri- culture officials in New Orleans, found animals were to be posted on designated Web sites. Hundreds of animal lovers logged on to help out.
"Rescue without reunification is not a true rescue," says Marilyn Knapp Litt, who lives in northern Bexar County. A retired webmaster for a federal agency, she started Stealth, an online network dedicated to tracking down pet owners, within a month after Katrina.
At its peak, she says, more than 1,000 volunteers in the U.S. and Canada were scouring online sources to match unclaimed pets with displaced owners. "There are people who literally have put their lives on hold for this; it's taken on a life of its own," she says.
But plenty of the rescued animals disappeared, absorbed anonymously into the country. Some fell through cracks in the rescue operation, victims of on-the-ground chaos and a tracking system inadequate to the magnitude of the disaster. Others, however, were spirited away on purpose.
"Some of these groups would just come into our parish, take animals and leave," says Trog. "They'd sneak them past checkpoints by covering the kennels with blankets."
Rice recalls rescuers snipping identification tags off animals' collars before driving them away. "Some of these rescue groups were not interested in seeing animals returned to their owners," he says. Madura, who volunteered at Lamar-Dixon for several days, remembers a group of women fighting over a group of small dogs, like matrons at a Loehmann's fire sale.
"I think many people got caught in the trap of falling in love with a pet," says Trog. But a number of rescuers also concluded they were saving pets not just from a natural disaster, but from irresponsible owners who had callously abandoned their pets and provided only a minimum of care before that.
Pacelle says out-of-state rescuers were shocked, for example, by the high incidence of heartworm and the number of unneutered pets. "I've never seen so many testicles in my life," he admits.
Don Feare, an attorney who represents a Dallas-area rescue group and several Katrina adopters being pursued by New Orleans pet owners, says the medical condition of the rescued dogs and cats suggests many were treated poorly well before any hurricane or flooding. "People are trying to shove that off as cultural differences," he says. "Well, don't tell me that unless you're prepared to say New Orleans is a Third-World country."
Those familiar with animal law say neglect is tricky to define, though. "One man's appropriate medical care is another's ridiculous expense. It's a very personalized area," says John Bradley, who, as Williamson County's district attorney, says he struggles with animal neglect cases.
And Trog is fiercely protective of her constituents. "What are the standards for good treatment of a pet?" she asks. "If I don't let my dog up on the bed, does that make me a bad owner? We were a poor parish, but we loved our animals."
'I'm the kind of person who'll stop on the side of the freeway to get an animal off the road," Madura says. She first joined the Katrina pet-rescue effort after seeing a rescue group soliciting crates for hurricane-displaced animals at an Austin pet store. She quickly went online and posted a plea for donations.
Cruising Web sites related to the disaster, "I kept hearing desperate calls for personal items," she recalls. She collected towels, shampoo and other supplies, rented a van and headed to New Orleans. "I don't think I slept for three days," she says.
After returning, Madura kept in touch with PawMatch, an Austin pet adoption organization formed only a month earlier. On his second trip to New Orleans, founder Andy Odom was approached by a frantic volunteer at a Jefferson Parish feed store, where an unofficial rescue operation had set up shop.
"It was pandemonium there," he recalls. "This guy with a cocker spaniel told me the dog's family had died in the storm and that it was in real sick health. He said that if he handed it over to one of the official facilities, it would be put to sleep."
"I was almost forced into it," he adds. "But I didn't think twice."
The dog — by then named Hope Floats — was in rough shape, bloated to pregnancy size. Her hair was patchy-, and she was bleeding from several openings. Odom found a foster home in Wimberley; a local vet who saw Hope recommended she be euthanized.
Odom wrote about Hope's saga on PawMatch's Web site. He says it never occurred to him to post her whereabouts on one of the national Web sites designated by the official rescue organizations. "I'd been told the owners were dead," he says. "Besides, the dog had obviously not been looked after."
PawMatch's story about Hope noted the dog's serious medical problems. After thinking it over, Madura, who lives with her boyfriend, offered to take her anyway. "I'm looking for a last-chance animal," she remembers saying.
When Madura picked her up, Hope still wore diapers and had little hair. "Some hair seemed matted, but it turned out to be her skin sloughing off," she recalls. A local veterinarian pronounced Hope's medical conditions—a serious skin ailment, bladder stones and a urinary infection — longstanding. Today, after an operation and doses of antibiotics and skin medications — and more than $1,000 in vet bills — Hope is mostly healthy.
"When I first got her I thought, 'I really want to find the owners,' " says Madura, who is white. "I was so sad for the people I saw at Lamar-Dixon looking for their animals. It was tragic." But the more she thought about it, the more she became convinced she was protecting Hope. "This dog was dying," she says. "You don't have a child abused and neglected, and then place her back in that situation."
Shalanda Augillard, who is African-American, last saw her then-8-year-old Jazz on Aug. 29, when she dropped the dog off at her mother's house in New Orleans on her way to the Federal Express facility near the airport, where she works as a ramp agent. (Through her attorneys, Augillard declined comment for this story.) Her mother was evacuated several days later.
Court filings say she tried to board a rescue boat with Jazz but was ordered to leave the dog. So she reluctantly left Jazz in an upstairs room with food and water to last "several weeks." National Guardsmen apparently rescued Jazz—"a beloved family pet since (she) was a puppy," court filings say — around Sept. 9.
Augillard, whose home was not significantly damaged in the hurricane, says she began searching for Jazz as soon as she could, visiting Lamar-Dixon and posting information about her on official Web sites. On Dec.r 27, a volunteer for Katrina Cocker Find spotted Hope on PawMatch's Web site and alerted Augillard.
Over the next four months, she, Madura and PawMatch went back and forth over whether Hope was in fact Jazz. An exchange of veterinarian records didn't prove anything conclusively. Convinced Augillard wasn't the owner, Madura refused a face-to-face meeting, and in early May, Augillard filed her lawsuit.
Since then, the dispute has turned increasingly nasty. A temporary restraining order removed Hope from Madura's custody to a neutral kennel. Three weeks later, a Hays County judge found insufficient evidence that Hope was the dog Augillard was searching for and ordered the spaniel back to Madura, where she remains.
A meeting in mid-July at a vet's office turned confrontational when Augillard and a lawyer showed up with a video camera and pursued Madura around the office. A recent DNA test concluded that dog hair Augillard says came from an old sweater matched that of Hope/Jazz. But Madura and her Austin lawyer, Michael Murray, contend the hair from the sweater was a plant — secretly brushed off Hope by Augillard during a recent visit — so the results should be tossed.
If Hope really is Jazz, the dog legally belongs to Augillard. Animals are considered property, and Louisiana law gives residents three years to claim their lost possessions. But even "If (Augillard) is her owner, Hope shouldn't have to go back," Madura says. "And as much as I love her, they can place her in someone else's care."
Augillard's reports on Jazz's health prior to her disappearance have varied. According to one court filing, "The dog was in excellent physical condition" before Katrina. Later, Augillard said Jazz had a thyroid condition and kidney problems, but that both were being treated.
Litt, who follows such cases on her Web site, says the dog's health shouldn't be an issue. "Finders-keepers is not in the spirit of what this has been is all about," she says. A hearing to consider the DNA test results is scheduled for Thursday.
If the New Orleans pet owners, let their pets free during Katrina, the pets would have found their way out to safety while the owners would stand around waiting for the government to come for them, some drowning in the process.
I offered to take in a dog, (instead of a donation) with the understanding that he/she would go back to the owner , if found. The shelter said they would get back to me but never did. If it's her dog, the new owner should give her back IMO. If she is worried about neglect, there are people that can monitor. If the first owner has all this time and money though, I think she should pay for medical care and show some gratitude and understanding of why the foster is concerned.
"10 to 25 percent — have been reunited with their original Louisiana owners. "
What a sad statement about the owners. I wouldn't have left my pet in the first place. But if we had been separated, I'd have been back there as soon as the roads were passable, to get my pet back.
If people cared even half as much for HUMAN babies .....
This is INSANITY !
So a family that has the resources to hire a lawyer to fetch their dog, did not have the resources to leave town before the storm hit?
How do you put out several weeks of food out anyway? The bugs would make the food pretty yucky in a short time.
To settle the case of the rightful owner, why not ask the dog?
What a stupid thing to say. The dog has received the medical care it required and is recovering. If it hadn't, it would be long gone.
There still is no definitive proof that Hope is actually Jazz. If Hope is Jazz, and then IF the owner can come up with the money the rescuers spent returning that dog to good health, then she is responsible enough to get the dog back. Otherwise, she should go buy or adopt another dog.
I'd have left WITH our PETS. There is NO WAY, I'd leave our pets behind. If it would have been us, as soon as we'd heard the warnings we'd be loading up the car with stuff and the PETS and on the road to where a hotel or motel is pet friendly.
If DNA tests prove the dog belongs to the original owner, then the adopting "owner" needs to STFU and hand it over. There's only about 600 years of property law precedent.
Okay, I laughed.
I would call evacuating from a possible category 5 storm heading your way and leaving the petbehind (which is the owner's responsibility) should be called abandonment and also animal abuse. They don't deserve to be pet owners.
However, if you are merely speaking of emotional abandonment, then let's simply say that it has no place in this discussion.
Call me heartless, but I don't want my tax dollars squandered on pet rescue when there are still human beings to take care of. No going back for pets; if you can carry them with you when are pulled up/out -- OK. Otherwise, tough sh*t. Besides. most of the people here have no business (no money) for pets/pet food et al. Them's the hard facts. And I don't care what race/color you are. This goes across the board. Spare me that racist drivel...SSZ
Whether or not legally the property issue you are talking about, it is still ABUSE. If someone evacuated without their pets, they had fear for their own well being. they are responsible for the well being of their pet.
I do not disagree. But unfortunately, it is not material to whether the original owner still has a legal claim on the animal.
The people were TOLD to EVACUATE. Pets had no choice in the matter. So we have all this monstrous rescue mission to save people who were too stupid to leave.
I just don't see how. Forgive me, but this is just a sore spot with me. The animals were helpless and the arrogant owners left them behind or were too stupid to leave in the first place.
Where is Judge Wapner when you really need him?
The problem is too many people who can't seem to distinguish between the value of human life and the value of animal life.
Bringing lawyers and judges into a fight over who owns a dog is like bringing lawyers and judges into a fight over who owns a bicycle. Just shut up and buy a new bicycle. The savings in legal fees will be more than enough to buy a replacement.
Someone has a superiority complex don't they? An animal is a living breathing thing. Nothing like a bicycle.
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