Thousands of dogs run loose in New Orleans
By Michael Brick The New York Times
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 200
NEW ORLEANS Up North Claiborne Avenue five dogs ran as a pack between smashed houses under dead power lines, through the twisted junkscape of lumber and tin, a wall marked "Possible Body" and a headless Virgin Mary with arms outstretched.
The dogs, including a German shepherd, a beagle and a yellow Labrador, roam the city, gaunt and uncomprehending, at turns frightened and menacing, loping directionless between ruined buildings, drinking the muck, staring at cars, waiting to die.
They are everywhere. A week ago, their self-appointed rescuers spoke of reuniting them with masters, but that talk has ended. Now the dogs are an infestation, untold thousands unwell, unrestrained and left to their devices.
"I'm afraid that they'll be out here for years," said Wendy Guidry, among those who spend their days trying to corral the dogs. "That there'll be a long-term population of dogs that will never be caught, that will live on the streets for years and eventually be hit by cars. That will be their lives."
The dogs do not lack for sympathy or attendants. From the first days after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to this city, images of pets that were left behind over the protests of their owners drew crowds of rescue volunteers. Money was gathered and airlifts were chartered.
Among the crowded flights bound for New Orleans when Louis Armstrong Airport reopened last week, on planes full of cowboy contractors and corporate fixers, the earnest came to save the dogs.
On a connection out of Atlanta, Crystal Smith made the first flight of her life to join the Humane Society in New Orleans. She was afraid of the dogs she would find.
"They're becoming vicious," she said. "But it's not because they're hungry and they want to eat people. They're scared. They're stressed out; they've been living on the roof. And they don't know what you're here for."
More than 400 rescuers are based at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales, Louisiana, 60 miles, or 95 kilometers, away, said Julie Morris, director of national outreach for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. With credentials from New Orleans, they enter the city to chase animals, and they have captured about 7,000.
How many remain no one knows. Based on human demographics, the American Veterinary Medical Association has estimated that 50,000 to 70,000 dogs were kept as pets in New Orleans.
"There's nobody who knows how many people successfully evacuated with their animals," Morris said.
That leaves pets abandoned in the evacuation of the city, the feral population and the pit bulls trained to fight for sport, a significant pastime here before the storm. Rescuers on the streets said the bigger dogs were dying first.
"We were seeing dogs eating dead dogs," Guidry said.
Those removed from the city are increasingly diseased. Sixty have been euthanized in Gonzales.
"The longer it goes on, the worse that's going to get," Morris said.
On the streets, though, the dogs are learning to survive. Rescuers, soldiers and journalists leave the dogs food, and sometimes the food is gone when the people return. Rescuers have found dogs cowering in houses, but many dogs, called runners, remain on the streets.
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