[StBernard] Lost in Katrina and in new homes - whose pet now?

[Westley Annis]

Lost in Katrina and in new homes - whose pet now?
By Patrik Jonsson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor 

ATLANTA - There's a spot on Army Lt. Jay Johnson's bed that is heavy with
emptiness, he says, and it can only be filled with his beloved Missy. 
He was in Iraq when his family broke the news to him that volunteer rescuers
who scoured New Orleans after hurricane Katrina had taken away his furry
Shih Tzu. 

  
"PRECIOUS": New Orleans resident Linda Charles is suing the Humane Society
of North Texas to get her dog back. 

An ID chip implanted in Missy should have ensured her return to him, he
says, but instead she was allowed to be adopted by another family. Mr.
Johnson hopes to reclaim his dog by suing the entity which took ownership of
her after the storm: the Humane Society of North Texas. 

"I fight against people who do harm to other people, and I feel it's my
obligation to fight in this case," Johnson says.

He's one of about 20 Katrina survivors in the US who have sued humane
societies, animal rescue agencies, or people who adopted the animals, for
the return of a "Precious" or a "Bandit."

The lawsuits are efforts to reunite family members - even fuzzy ones - who
have been separated by Katrina. They also raise troubling questions about
whether animals should be treated as property or as members of the family -
and which homes they belong in.

"We're trying to distinguish between dog-nappers and good-faith finders, and
that's a huge gray area right now from hurricane Katrina," says David Favre,
a law professor at Michigan State University in Lansing and an animal law
expert.

Volunteer groups estimate that 50,000 pets were stranded after the storm.
Some died, others went wild, skirting the shadows of New Orleans and its
parishes. Sometimes heroically, volunteers scouring the flooded city in duck
boats and canoes rescued about 15,000 of those animals - including dogs,
cats, parakeets, and even goats.

But many animals disappeared, whether picked directly from the muck or given
to out-of-state adopters by the multi-agency bureaucracy that coordinated
the rescue effort - even as original owners continued a desperate search.

"I think many rescuers got judgmental, they saw so much horrible stuff and
they decided that they didn't want to hear the reasons why the dogs were
left behind," says Becky Correia, of Stealth Volunteers, a group trying to
reunite owners with pets they lost after Katrina.

In many cases, overwhelmed shelters were forced to find new homes for pets
that had not been claimed even after pictures were posted on the Internet.

Now, courts in North Carolina, Florida, and Texas have stepped in to sort
out where the pets lost after Katrina belong.

As thousands of Americans became part of a huge Katrina pet adoption
project, court documents describe how class and race have become issues
since some defendants claim that the animals are better off in wealthier
homes than in poorer ones, where care may be substandard.

"These animals are only moving in one direction, from poor to rich and from
black to white and, as an American, that really bothers me," says Steven
Wise, an animal rights lawyer in Florida, who is handling two custody cases.

St. Bernard Parish resident Thomas Exnicious III is in the midst of an
emotional battle to be reunited with his Chihuahua Tricksy.

Before he left his home August 27, 2005, he poured plenty of food in
Tricksy's bowl, planning to see her in a day or two. But in the massive
rescue effort after the storm, Tricksy was swept up and moved from shelter
to shelter. She was finally handed over to the Animal Compassion Network
(ACN) in North Carolina, which in turn adopted the dog out.

The organization defended its decision in court documents. "... Consistent
with its program for adopting animals to suitable homes, [ACN] adopted out
... the dog known as SBP 351," the lawsuit says.

In another case, Pam Bondi, a state prosecutor in Tampa, Fla., adopted a
Katrina St. Bernard dog from St. Bernard Parish, and named him Noah. Earlier
this month, the dog's original owners, who had named him Master Tank, flew
to Florida and filed a lawsuit against Ms. Bondi and the Humane Society of
Pinellas and gave a press conference. Bondi has refused to return the dog,
because she says a case of heartworms is evidence that the dog was neglected
before the storm.

State laws, so far, are on the side of the original owners because pets are
considered property, not family, law experts say. "Finders, keepers" laws
state that property must be abandoned for at least a year before original
owners lose their rights to it unless the finders can prove they made a
good-faith effort to find the owner. In Louisiana, the requirement is three
years. In January, a New Jersey judge ordered a family to return a dog
adopted after Katrina to its owner in New Orleans.

"The finders are going to have a good claim only if they've made a very
strong effort to notify or return the dog to the original owner," says Mr.
Favre.

For his part, Johnson isn't giving up on his Missy. "I can understand [the
new family] falling in love with it, but it's not theirs. They have to give
the dog back," he says.