A Message From Ingrid E. Newkirk

Hurricane Katrina brought out the best—and the worst—in people. Our rescue team is haunted by the memory of discovering one couple calmly pulling belongings from their flood-damaged New Orleans house—without ever going upstairs to check on the two dogs they had left locked in a bathroom weeks before. When our team raced in to get the dogs, they found one already dead and the other barely clinging to life. The couple barely looked up from their packing as we rushed this poor dog off to get veterinary care.

Yes, some people fought against being airlifted to safety without their dogs, and others stayed in danger rather than leave without their animals. But some people left animals as casually as one might leave an old saucepan. Many animals had clearly been neglected long before the flood, chained to dilapidated doghouses or confined to rusty cages and crates. There were countless pit bulls who had obviously been used for fighting, judging from the old scars and the weights and other dogfighting paraphernalia found in their homes.

Tragically, in the chaos that followed the hurricane, many of these animals were either returned to abusive owners or relinquished to "rescuers" without any screening. The owner of one so-called "no-kill" shelter that evacuated animals from the disaster area was later charged with cruelty when hundreds of dogs were found on her property—they had been confined to cramped, filthy crates and kennels for weeks, surrounded by mountains of garbage and completely exposed to the elements.

It's important to remember that, come hell or high water, animals should never be turned over to anyone without careful screening and without being spayed or neutered first. We must be brave enough to face the fact that it is better for an animal to be given eternal peace than to be put through a nightmare or left neglected in a cage or on the end of a chain. Whether we are trying to place one animal or 4,000, their vulnerability to cruelty and mistreatment must never be forgotten.

For all animals,



Ingrid E. Newkirk
President