Driving into New OrleansDay One – Rush Hour 7:30 am

New Orleans, a once thriving city, is now a ghost town.

The scenery is surreal – nothing is as it should be

Boats and cars are strewn about on the streets of New Orleans. Cars, left on the street during evacuation, were replaced by boats when the water receded.

Camp CompassionMy First Camp in NO

Dogs were housed in the blue “pods” and under tents in the center of the compound. Cats, puppies and exotics were in the main building on the left of the picture. We mostly slept in our cars

Camp Compassion Food Store

We really did start out to be neat and tidy, but too many animals, too few people, turned it into an organizational nightmare!

Camp Compassion

True organized chaos!

Cat rescue

Jezelle, left, and Joanne Fullwood, a New Orleans police officer, pull a cat out from behind a dresser in the upstairs bedroom in a house in New Orleans that was flooded after Hurricane Katrina. The owners fled by boat as the lower floor of the house filled with five feet of water, but the people were forced to leave six cats in the bedroom. Nearly three weeks later, the floodwaters receded and pet rescuers entered the home and found five of the six cats healthy, but one remained missing, for which the rescuers left food and water

The puppy rescue

I got tocrawl intothis hole to get a chow pup out. Dagget is here with me, suffering from encephalitis and is blind from it at the moment

MASH Unit in the back of my truck at Camp Compassion

Dog ready to ship to shelter

The MASH Unit was designed to “treat ‘em and street ‘em” Treatment was given to wounds, cuts, dehydration, etc., Frontline and worming. Animals were then shipped to other shelters outside of New Orleans for housing and/or further treatment

Load out to Shelter

Dennis Roby, a truck driver and animal lover from Opelousas, La., helps load rescued dogs into his rig for them to be shipped to an animal shelter in San Antonio.

Puppy going home!

Marianne (SAR-OH) getting ready to go back home with the golden retriever puppy going to its forever home in Ohio

Rush hour consisted of the relief workers trying to get back to base camps before curfew (Left side of picture is all relief workers heading

into town – our base camp was out of town)

Camp Winn-Dixie

Camp Winn-Dixie

Intake Area and DecontamStation

Clinic/MASH isback here

Dog kennelsAggressive & holding

“Home Depot”Dogs ready to ship to shelters

CommandCenter

Owned/ClaimedAnimal holding, Cats & exotics

Tent city – humanSleeping area

Clinic/MASH at Winn Dixie

Clinic/MASH at Winn Dixie

Tray with one of our “patients” a 9-month old merliquin dane

Another save!

This little guy came into the MASH unit severely dehydrated and clinging to life. We got the IV’s started and he was ready for transport to the LSU Vet Hospital within 12 hours

Dog HousingDogs were housed in the orange tent and the blue tent behind it, while awaiting transport to shelters. SAR staging is on the left side

And Noah was told to bring two of every creature

Yes, we even rescued chickens!

Lara – Woman extraordinaire!

Lara, as well as being on the SAR team, ran the area for owned and claimed pets. This was her buddy “Spot” who she had taggedup for dal rescue.

The Grooming Shop is open!

Mary (on right), from VA, took on the task of shaving down the little Havanese I rescued – Miss Hurricane. We patched her into the emergency power at the Winn Dixie for her clippers

There is so much left to do…

Gail (FL) sits next to a dog who died on the mostly empty and dangerous streets of New Orleans. She was trying to capture the other dog, still living, who would not leave the deceased dog's side. The wary dog would not let her leash it after nearly an hour of trying. Frustrated, we finally had to abandon the effort and move on to other tasks in the momentous job of rescuing the thousands of pets left behind on the streets of New Orleans .

But there are happy endings!

A call came into camp that 2 dogs had been left behind when the owner was forced to evacuate. A SAR team was sent out and recovered the dogs. I had the honor of driving them back to their owner in El Paso.