Among the countless souls rescued from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, there were thousands upon thousands of pets.  Five years later, some are still waiting for a return home.  1400 miles away from New Orleans, sits the largest companion animal sanctuary in the United States, and about 40 dogs and 4 cats left homeless in the storms wake.  The Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, located in picturesque Kanab, Utah saved 6-thousand animals in the days, weeks and months after Katrina.

Shortly after the storm hit, staff and volunteers headed to the Gulf.  Francis Battista was one of the many.  “We were located in Tylertown, (Mississippi) at St Francis Animal Sanctuary…that is kind of a sister organization and the folks there are great folks and they opened up their facility to set up and emergency shelter there.  So Best Friends built a…temporary capacity for about 400 animals at any given time and we were bringing animals through,” Battista tells Fox News.

Volunteers and staff would go into St Bernard Parish and surrounding areas to look for animals that had been left behind.  In the rush to save human lives, rescue workers traveling by boat through the flooded streets told residents being evacuated that they had no choice but to leave their family pets.  Best Friends CEO Gregory Castle says, “It was tragic and we recognized that there were some seriously wrong things about the way that whole operation was conducted…and we felt that was just absolutely wrong, and so one of the big things that we did was to step into those kinds of situations and help who had been forced to do that or did it voluntarily, because many people did….so we felt we had a role to play there in filling the gap.”  Castle describes the initial part of the rescue chaotic and haphazard, but a situation in which many lessons were learned.

In 2006, President George W. Bush signed the PET Act into law.  This is legislation that requires state and local municipalities to include disaster plans for household pets and service animals. “That is a big change,” Castle states, “A big plus that came out of, sounds weird, but a big plus that came out of Katrina.  So in other impending kind of disaster of that sort, communities are required to have evacuation plans for animals too.”

According to the folks at Best Friends, animals traveled farther during evacuations than many people did.  That means that in shelters across the country, there may be pets from Katrina still waiting for a home.  Here in Kanab, each animal has its own story and each still shows the effects of that period of time.  But here at Best Friends Animal Society, they have had the opportunity to rehabilitate and learn to trust again.

Some were trapped in homes, without food or fresh water for weeks or months.  Others came to the rescue shelter with the water mark still on their coats, covered in filth, water and toxic waste.  And while many of the animals continue to have strong reactions to rain and thunderstorms. They have survived.

At Best Friends, where the mission is to see a time when there are no more homeless pets, they will make a home for these animals as long as it takes.  This is a ’sanctuary’, so they have a no kill policy.

If you are interested checking out the pets up for adoption, here’s their website: http://adoptions.bestfriends.org/

Or

Click on the video to meet some of the Katrina dogs:

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