Wednesday, March 12, 2008

An interview with an animal rescue volunteer

He is naked, skinny and hairless.

A hard ball protrudes from the side of his neck where an abscess has formed in response to a puncture wound. Uncontrollable diarrhea racks his scab covered body and contributes to his putrid stench.

And yet, his tail is still wagging.

The mutt looks up gratefully into a pair of warm brown eyes and settles down under their gentle care. Brandi sighs. It’s going to be tough to forget about this one.

Brandi's been in Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans for three days now, having arrived with another volunteer from Chicago. She is working triage with a group from VMAT (Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams) a division of the American Veterinary Medical Association. They are paid vets, she is not. She is a trained vet tech, a volunteer whose sense of urgency led her to toss a water jug, a jar of peanut butter and some biodegradable soap into a newly purchased camping pack, spend $300 for personal vaccinations and plunge, heart first, into the animal rescue effort. Her supportive bosses at Shedd Aquarium let her have at it and off she went for Lord knew how long. This is a woman who keeps extra leashes in her glove department in the event that she comes across stray dogs.

When Katrina besieged the gulf coast, stories of human suffering were inescapable. Images of stranded people clinging to rooftops popped up on computers, shouted from newspaper stands and glowed from TV screens. What we didn’t see, however, was much evidence of the great tide of animal suffering.

Many evacuating residents, assuming they’d be back in a day or two, left their pets with bowls of food and water. Some refused to leave them at all and so, were left to fend for themselves. Others seemed to ignore their pet’s welfare altogether. “I hate to make this generalization,” Brandi says, “but it was obvious to me that they were not very well taken care of before the hurricane. I don’t doubt that a good percentage of pet owners didn’t think twice about leaving their animals behind.” She’ll see over 1,000 dogs on this trip and find that not one of them is neutered. Not one.

She bends over this scrawny, wriggling dog, the one with no fur, and surveys the vast number of scars criss-crossing his shivering body. This little guy dealt with more than neglect. After giving him the standard series of vaccines, flea killer, de-worming and a micro chip for identification, she reluctantly hands him over to the volunteer who will scan the info on petfinder.com and assign him a cage, but not before asking the woman to return and tell her where he ends up. She will later grab a Sharpie and add his barn, stall and cage numbers to the growing list on her slender arm. She can’t keep track of all of them, but there are a few she feels compelled to follow up with.

Tall and wiry like a greyhound, her motor runs on a potent mix of devotion, drive and pure energy. She’s never hungry, it’s just too hot, so the pounds are melting off her already spare frame. She is a hardened veteran now- you get that way quickly around here- but a just a few days ago, when she arrived, she felt assaulted by the heat and the deafening din of thousands of dogs clamoring for attention.

Five cavernous barns, each containing six aisles, with 25 horse stalls per aisle. Every stall packed with five to six wire crates and each holding a dog. A howling, frightened, traumatized dog. “They were sitting in these little cages with nothing,” Brandi recalls, “no blanket or towel, and they would bark, bark, bark, they were stressed out, they were bored, and it never stopped.”

She planned on going into the field, snatching trapped dogs out of abandoned houses or taping up wounds in the middle of the street. But then she heard from the rescuers. At the day’s end, when the vans were full, dogs would often run after the vehicles, only to be left behind. She knew she couldn’t deal with that. No way.

Instead she ministered to them when they arrived by the hundreds, systematically providing solid, fundamental care with as much tenderness as time allowed. The tempo revved up in the evenings. It felt surreal. “You’d start to see the headlights and there’d be a line of vehicles coming back from the city,” she recalls. “You’ve been busting your butt all day in the hot sun while these people were gone because you were so worried about the animals that were there. You’d look and there’d be hundreds more coming. We were running out of space, there was nowhere to put them. You’d hear rumors that there are 300 more coming and they should be here by 6. Oh my God, it never stopped, it just never stopped.”

Many who have made this journey form deep attachments with the victims they’ve come to help. Perhaps the punishing heat and lack of sound sleep contribute to the sense of desperation, but resolute volunteers, loath to say goodbye to their charges, barter and haggle to secure temporary shelter until they can claim them. A bargaining subculture develops. Brandi cannot forget the bald, oozing dog with the steadily wagging tail, the puppy who needs extensive, costly care. She knows he will be overlooked in favor of cuddlier, less needy dogs.

She meets another Chicagoan who has her own car and pleads with the woman to bring the puppy back. She hands her $100, hoping that will secure the agreement. But Brandi remains uneasy. “I kept thinking we’re going to leave and someone’s going to offer this girl a better deal and she’s not going to bring my puppy back.”

She continued to work 13-15 hours shifts daily, often by lantern light until 3:00AM. After 8 grueling days, Brandi had lost 10 pounds, but gained a keen awareness that this type of impactful work is something she needed more of. Her experience here led her to assume the unofficial role of vet coordinator at the shelter where she’s been volunteering.

But soon, it was time to go. The woman Brandi arrived with decided to head home with a van full of dogs to be sheltered in Chicago. To make room for the never-ending onslaught of rescuees, when the vehicles are full, the departing groups are urged to get out quickly. However, a problem develops while loading their van. The attending vet declares that the last dog is too big for the carrier so he will have to stay. There is now an empty cage. Brandi seizes the opportunity. She sprints back to the barn where she last saw the puppy, tearing up and down the aisles until she finds him. Breathless, she scoops him up, finds the woman she paid and tells her to forget it, keep the money, I’m taking him home.

As for the puppy, his name is now Mason, and he gets along just fine with her two other dogs. She proudly displays his grinning, picture on her cell phone screen. “The pup has really bonded to me and I swear it’s because of New Orleans,” she says, “at least that’s what I’d like to think.”