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September 17, 2005, 1 p.m.: ‘I Can’t Imagine the Pain, Suffering, and Panic She Felt’
“You think the day before [in the field] is really bad,” team leader Laura Brown said in her report early this morning, “and then the next day you see the worst thing you’ve ever seen.”
Friday was that kind of day for PETA’s team on the front line in New Orleans.
With space for rescued animals in short supply at the temporary animal shelters erected in the city, PETA’s team was only able to rescue animals who were in critical condition. They spent the majority of the day providing food and water for the hundreds of animals running at large and trapped in homes in the still-flooded city. Officials told our team yesterday that they have noticed a marked improvement in the stray animals’ body conditions, and Laura said that the team continues to build friendships with skittish dogs they plan to rescue later as space becomes available.
The team was able to rescue and secure veterinary care for a terrier found suffering from a severe skin infection inside his guardians’ flooded house. The team, tipped off to the dog’s plight by friends of his guardians, found the animal “frozen with fear” and “plastered into a corner” of the home’s bathroom. The dog was hiding behind a toilet whose pipes had burst and were spraying newly available water everywhere. The dog was slowly coaxed into a carrier and taken to our van, where Laura said he “perked up” and enjoyed some food and air-conditioning before taking a well-deserved nap.
“No matter how bad you imagine” that the animals’ situation in New Orleans might be, Laura said, there is always something worse right around the corner. The “house of horrors” that the team had found a day earlier paled in comparison to the team’s discovery late yesterday in one flooded home.
They broke into a house after finding a note pinned to its front door that read, “The dogs are in their kennels in the kitchen to protect the house from intruders.” The team entered the home’s kitchen, where the floor boards had warped and begun to rot. They first found a crate that had been overturned and was empty—leading them to suspect that one dog had escaped and exited the house through its open back door.
Next, they went around the kitchen table, and as Laura said, “the most horrible smell of rotting flesh smothered our faces.” There, locked inside a crate on top of the kitchen table, were the rotting remains of a pit bull. Laura said that in “the silence of the abandoned house, the only thing you could hear” was the sound of maggots eating the dog’s remains.
The dog had been left in the crate without any food or water. The team couldn’t determine how long she had survived such deprivation, but they did notice a large gap in the crate’s wire door, where the dog had apparently chewed and clawed in her desperate attempt to escape and try to survive. “I can’t imagine the pain, suffering, and panic she felt,” Laura said, as she first endured the storm and ensuing flood before slowly dying, probably of starvation and/or dehydration. Laura said that the dog’s head was “slumped up against the crate’s door,” leading her to believe that the dog had only died after finally giving up her frantic attempt to escape. It was “one of the most striking, heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen,” Laura said.
The team then entered the home’s backyard and found evidence of dog breeding, possibly for fighting. Filthy hutches—thankfully not holding any animals—were everywhere, as were heavy logging chains and various weights. A calendar recorded the dates of the dogs’ breeding and births. Suddenly a growl was heard coming from a nearby shed. Inside, the team found a pit bull whose stomach dragged along the ground—she had clearly given birth to many litters of puppies.
This was the dog, the team believes, who had escaped from a crate in the kitchen. She was cowering in a corner, behind a washing machine and under an overturned table. The defensive dog could not be handled, so the team left her water and “tons of food” and will return to live-trap this sole survivor and remove her from her hideous surroundings.
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PETA's House Government Reform Committee Testimony
Heroes of the Storm
Stars Urge Officials to Take Action to Protect Animals in Disasters in PETA Ad
Read the Latest News From the Gulf Coast
Listen to PETA's Reports From New Orleans
Watch Footage of PETA's Life-Saving Work
See Pictures of PETA's Rescue Work
