Lots of animals were lost and abandoned during Katrina evacuations. A lot of those animals ended up getting sent to distant shelters and adopted. This story talks about a woman who adopted a dog and is now refusing to give it back to the previous owner.
I think most everybody’s knee-jerk reaction is the same: what a bitch!
…but is she? Let’s consider some facts. Katrina made landfall over 10 months ago. Without making any value judgments about it, the fact is that the dog was abandoned by its owner. Both sides can afford lawyers.
First of all, if that dog had found its way into a kill shelter and it took the original owner 10 months to find it, the only thing she’d get back was a little doggy death certificate. Second, Katrina did not spring up out of the ground in down-town New Orleans. It swirled around for an entire week as a hurricane and god knows how long as a tropical depression (etc) prior to that. The original owner had plenty of time to evacuate the dog. Regardless of her reason for not evacuating it, the fact is that she didn’t.
Also, the dog has now spent nearly half of its life with its new owner.
Further, the previous owner says that it is “unreasonable” to expect her to come get the dog. Is she going to compensate the current owner for the 7+ months of feeding, care, vet bills, time, etc that were spent on the dog? Even if we decide that the “fair” thing to do is to give the dog back, wouldn’t it be “fair” to expect the old owner to re-pay the new owner for all of those expenses (in addition to paying for the transport of the dog)?
After a little consideration, I don’t really think I would do it any differently. And calling the 10-year-old the “owner” of the dog is ridiculous. It’s either a sympathy grab or the woman is delusional. A ten year old simply cannot care for a dog. They can’t afford it, for starters, and almost universally they aren’t able to accept that level of responsibility. The kid may have grown attached to the dog, but he certainly did not “own” it in any sense of the word.
Also worth noting: if the old owner can afford a lawyer, she can afford a new dog. (Not to mention the fact that the initial adoption of a dog is one of the smallest expenses of dog ownership)
June 28th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
“Without making any value judgments about it, the fact is that the dog was abandoned by its owner. Both sides can afford lawyers.”
Obviously you are making judgements about it. In that single statement you are criticizing the owner for abandoning her down though she can afford a lawyer. Am I correct?
Regarding the abandonment – Pre-K I would have sworn I would never, ever do that. I almost did.
1) My mother’s cat was lost 3 weeks before Katrina (she has never run away before). I think she must have been run over by a car or something but there is no way to be sure. I have tried to locate her on websites but you are talking thousands and thousands of black, brown and tan cats on dozens of web sites. It’s not easy – all these months later I still check sometimes in hopes that I will get some word on the cat. My mothers lost everything and still worries about “baby” all the time. I would fight anyone to get her that one thing back.
2) Our cat was very old and sick as Katrina was rolling in. My husband had tears in his eyes when he said “…but I don’t think she will live through an evacuation”. He was right. She died the day after Katrina struck. We had taken her as far as Mississippi and left her with his parents. She died without her home or her family. If we had thought we would have been able to turn right around and come back after a few days I can promise we would have left lots of food and water out and abandoned her. In our case, I had just had a baby on the 24th so we knew that we would be gone for at least a week so we took her with us even though we knew it was a death sentence.
3) For Ivan we took both of our vehicles. I had my mother, our son, the dog, my mother’s two cats and her bird. My husband had most of our “stuff” and his cat. Had I not just had surgery we would have done the same thing and would not have had an issue but circumstances this time around were different - I could not drive so that ruled out his truck. I don’t know where the Yellow Lab would have fit in had my mother not taken her car. We did get her out but it might have gone another way easily.
I have friends that stayed with their animals and refused repeated offers of rescue so he could remain with them. After 10 days he got a text message out and an another mutual friend came in with a boat to get him and the dogs out. How much longer could he have remained?
I have another friend that was on her honeymoon when Katrina stuck. A friend was supposed to stop by and feed her dog everyday. Before he evacuated he filled bowls with water and dumped a whole ton of food out but he left her dog behind. Being in another country – Katrina was hitting New Orleans before they knew a thing about it. A policeman friend knew they were gone and was taking care of the dog (and living in their non-flooded house) but they did not know that until later.
I saw a news report after I returned to town (9 weeks after Katrina). An animal rescue group showed a feisty, healthy looking dog that they said had been locked in a bathroom that whole time and they had rescued him that day. They said he was taken from the neighborhood where my office is located – it did not flood. I turned to my husband and said, “I think those people broke into someone’s house and stole their dog while they were at work!”
There are all kinds of circumstances that could enter this picture – you just don’t know what the whole story is.
“Katrina did not spring up out of the ground in down-town New Orleans. It swirled around for an entire week as a hurricane and god knows how long as a tropical depression (etc) prior to that. The original owner had plenty of time to evacuate the dog.”
The very first time New Orleans was included in the probability cone for Katrina was Saturday morning at 5am. Before that we were not in the warning area at all. That left about 40 hours before the highway’s shutdown due to the impending arrival of Hurricane force winds. Trust me when I say there was not plenty of time to do anything!
“The previous owner says that it is “unreasonable” to expect her to come get the dog”
According to the AP she said “she is willing to have someone visit Doylestown and retrieve the dog”. Why is that a deal breaker? Having a friend or family member come pick up the dog instead of going personally is not unreasonable in my opinion?
“Is she going to compensate the current owner for the 7+ months of feeding, care, vet bills, time, etc”
Not even mentioned in the article at all. No need to comment.
“And calling the 10-year-old the “owner” of the dog is ridiculous. It’s either a sympathy grab or the woman is delusional”
Ask my three-year-old who his dog belongs to. He may not feed it (which I certainly did for my pets when I was 10) or take it to the vet. She may even be 3 years older than he is. If you said that dog belonged to anyone other than him you would be wrong. They are playmates and best friends. At night, if you want to find my dog she is on the foot of his bed.
“if the old owner can afford a lawyer, she can afford a new dog.”
So can the new owner.
I don’t know the circumstances at all – you don’t either.
June 28th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
“Obviously you are making judgements about it. In that single statement you are criticizing the owner for abandoning her down though she can afford a lawyer. Am I correct?”
No, you’re not. Those are two discrete, factual statements. Later in the post those two things are tied together to suggest that she probably had enough money to get the dog to safety ahead of the storm, had she had the presence of mind to do so, but that’s not in any way central to my larger point. If we assume that she can’t afford a lawyer and the only luxury she can afford is a dog, the rest of the post still holds up.
Regarding your half-dozen evacuation/animal stories… I’m sorry to hear about them, but they don’t change anything. Nor does the previous owner’s ability (or lackthereof) to get the pets out of harm’s way.
“Having a friend or family member come pick up the dog instead of going personally is not unreasonable in my opinion?”
No, it’s not. I never said that it was. Despite what the article implies, I don’t think it was the motivating factor for the new owner. It seems like she just changed her mind.
“‘if the old owner can afford a lawyer, she can afford a new dog.’
So can the new owner.”
The new owner has a dog already.
The bottom line is that the new owner saved the dog from being euthanized, and has cared for it for the last seven months. The new owner even made efforts to try to find the old owner after the storm. The dog rightfully belongs to the new owner, not the old one. It would be a tremendous act of good-will for the new owner to make the sacrifice of giving the dog back, but it seems silly to lambast her for not doing so.
Finally, with all due respect for your son’s opinion, the dog is not his. He might think that it is his, but it isn’t. If you did nothing for the dog and left all of the responsibility to your son, the dog would survive only by its own good fortune, if at all.
Your son is attached to the dog. Your son thinks the dog belongs to him. But, then, three-year-olds and ten-year-olds think a lot of things. Not all of them are true. Then again, as a parent, I’m sure you understand what a folly it would be to allow a child to determine what does and does not belong to him.
June 28th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
“Without making any value judgments about it, the fact is that the dog was abandoned by its owner. Both sides can afford lawyers.”
Pete, do you expect us to believe you chose the word “abandoned” with no thought to it’s connotation? The original article used the word “lost,” giving no other information about how the dog ended up in the shelter. Also, the phrase “[b]oth sides can afford lawyers” isn’t relevant to the persuing paragraph, and is only relevant if it is meant to inform a judgement about the owner. For example, examine: “Pete took longer to graduate from Alabama than Forrest Gump. He fell down a lot as a child.” The first sentence means you took a lot of classes and did lots of additional work, the second means you were clumsy. Together, they imply something else.
Your point that we should not knee-jerk into a judgement about the new owner is a good one. However, it is best thought of as the antithesis to the “what a bitch” thesis, eventually resulting in a Kantian synthesis that both parties have some (emotional) claim to the dog and someone is going to end up disappointed.
June 28th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Ryne: Instead of taking the sentences out of context, why not use all of them:
“Let’s consider some facts. Katrina made landfall over 10 months ago. Without making any value judgments about it, the fact is that the dog was abandoned by its owner. Both sides can afford lawyers.”
Three distinct sentences, relating to each other in no particular way. I used the word “abandoned” because that’s what the dog was. AHD4e says “To give up by leaving or ceasing to operate or inhabit, especially as a result of danger or other impending threat”
I qualified the statement because I understand what the connotation of the word is, but I was not about to launch into a lengthy discussion about why it might or might not be contemptible for the dog to have been left behind.
As the previous commenter pointed out, we don’t know what happened. It’s possible that the minute Nawlins got the warning this woman packed an overnight bag, hopped in her car, and drove to Montana… leaving the dog behind with a large bowl of food because she didn’t want to him to puke on her seats because he gets carsick. It’s also possible that she stayed until the very last minute and needed to be air-lifted off the top of her house and was not allowed to bring the dog despite her pleading.
In both of those situations she did “abandon” the dog, but the elicit different value judgments.
July 15th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
Everyone…I want to clear up a few erroneous comments. First, the lawyer for the legal/original/true owner of this dog is actually handling this pro-bono. While the owner can most certainly afford some legal fees, very few of us can pay $200-400 an hour to take a case all the way to and through a trial. However, one person who can afford to pay endless legal fees seems to be the woman who adopted the dog.
Second, the dog was not abandoned by his owners. I’m no tired of that bit of stupidity. No one says that anymore unless they’ve been under a rock for the past 10.5 months.
Third, the dog has not spent nearly half its life with the adopter. The dog had been with them for 6 mos. at the time the owner first asked for her dog to be returned which = 1/4 of his life which is irrelevant anyway.
And fourth this dog was a present to an 8 year old boy from his father. No one is calling the child the “owner” (except newspaper reporters) but it is his dog as in “a boy and his dog.” Pete, I’m sorry that you didn’t get to have a dog when you were a kid, and get to play with it and love it and sleep with it while mom of course made sure he was fed and walked and taken to the vet.
The truth of this story will come out in the end. I can promise. So you might want to be careful of what you claim to KNOW or it will come back to bite you in the ass
July 16th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
First: the “legal” owner of the dog is the new owner.
Second: The dog was, in fact, abandoned. You might not like it, but it’s true. See above or any english dictionary.
Third: The article said “almost two” and the former owner likely did not get the dog until it was at least two months old… so what you have is a situation where the new owner had the dog almost as long as the old one did.
Fourth: As was elaborated on above, the child does not own the dog. He might be attached to it, he might love it, but he does not own it. And he almost certainly could not care for it on his own. (Whether or not I’ve had dogs, which I have almost constantly for as long as I can remember, is irrelevant to this fact)
So let’s recap what “facts” you helped us with:
And the things you didn’t address at all:
Thank you for adding so much to the discussion.
October 22nd, 2006 at 9:13 am
Well appears that the link didn’t work - This a blog which also addresses the issue of whether Katrina pets should be returned to their original owners or not. Maybe you’re interested, maybe you’re not. Yet, a very lively debate to say the least…
http://www.politicaldogs.org/2.....ck-now.htm
Am curious if you have been able to visit any of the devastated areas and what your thoughts are on the rebuilding efforts? Do you think New Orleans will EVER recover?
October 29th, 2006 at 2:20 am
Here’s another ~open~ ongoing dialogue for those still interested in who owns the Katrina pets:
http://www.itsyourtimes.com/?q=node/1411
And more on the court case filed in Pinellas County, FL:
http://forums.sptimes.com/Foru.....p;t=005953
October 29th, 2006 at 2:52 am
State of Louisiana Civil Code
Art. 3419. Lost things
One who finds a corporeal movable that has been lost is bound to make a diligent effort to locate its owner or possessor and to return the thing to him. If a diligent effort is made and the owner is not found within three years, the finder acquires ownership. Acts 1982, No. 187, §1, eff. Jan. 1, 1983.
Online Resources for Attorneys Researching Pet Law
Louisiana Animal Law
Citation: LA R.S. 2451 - 2778 - Animal Legal & Historical Center
Overview of Lost Dog Laws
by Rebecca F. Wisch, 2006 - Animal Legal & Historical Center
Humane Societies’ Rights and Obligations Regarding Companion Animal Ownership
by Patricia A. Bolen, 2005 - Animal Legal & Historical Center
Animal Law in New York State
[However, will Louisiana law stand-up in the courts of other states? That remains to be seen. However, most states do regard pets as personal property! So we will have to wait and see... Yet, apparently the state of NJ did: http://network.bestfriends.org.....spx?bp=503 ]
October 29th, 2006 at 3:04 am
Here are but a few of the OTHER missing dogs and cats of Katrina that are being actively sought by their owners. They are the last link to a lost life…
http://lostdogsofkatrina.info/all.php
http://lostcatsofkatrina.info/all.php
As you pointed out value judgments and sentimentality aside, who DO these pets really belong to over 12 months after the fury of Hurricane Katrina passed, and the unprecendented flooding of the Greater New Orleans area ensued, due to the failure of the levees. That is for the judges (and perhaps juries) to decide. We can only sit and endlessly expound are own opinions and points of view. However, I hope you will revisit this issue when the case is resolved. TY
October 29th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Listen, there’s a lot of law to be looked over, but it’s quite clear that animals can be abandoned in Louisiana… in fact, there have been bills passed with exactly such names, “The Louisiana Abandoned Animals Act”, for instance, and by the laws of most (all?) states, the first person to take (or reduce to possession) abandoned property is the new rightful owner.
The State Atty. General says that Louisiana considers pets to be “lost” rather than “abandoned”, but that’s clearly not always the case and, further, the Attorney General is not the law of the land. If she’s not backed up by statutes or court rulings, her opinion is no better than anyone else’s.
Frankly, I think anyone who wants their animal back after allowing someone else to own it for months and months, should have to pay the person for their time and care at a standard rate (the rate they would’ve had to pay a boarder to keep the animal).
In fact, based on the Abandoned Animals Act, if I had one of these pets, I would just invoice the person for the cost of my care and feeding. If they couldn’t pay within 10 days, they’d forfeit ownership of the animal. Problem solved.
October 29th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
…and, since I’m sick of having to police ridiculous comments, I’m closing these. Anyone who wants to participate in a discussion like this one can go to one of the links that “nudge” left.
I’m sure you’ll find lots of sane, rational discussion there.