CHAPTER FOUR

Written by Marti
October 22, 2005

We - that's Joey, Rickie & myself - are back and I think we are united in saying that it was one of the most difficult weeks of any of our lives. We are glad we did it, but there's no doubt but that it will be a week that haunts us. I have such roiling emotions about the entire experience that I don't even know where to begin writing about it. I know I'm not ready to write about the dogs. Maybe in a day or two I'll be composed enough to write a remembrance of some of the dogs.

To set the scene, New Orleans is beyond depressing. The bars & restaurants of the French Quarter were apparently beginning to reopen while we were there, but when we had occasion to drive through it, even this least effected section of the city had the aura of a convalescing invalid and piles of moldering trash awaited pick up on the sidewalk. Off the well-known byways of the French Quarter, where we once went to do several hundred pounds of soiled dog towels at a laundromat, there's an unnatural quiet. The military's presence is both reassuring & startling on the streets of an American city.

Elsewhere, to use a hackneyed cliché, the city looks like a war zone. There is a grimy film of dirt that covers everything and renders a once vibrant city colorless. Entire neighborhoods are deserted except for those people who are back to pile the remnants of their former lives on the sidewalks for the lumbering lines of garbage scows on wheels that begin to seem like an enduring funeral procession. It's hard to find an undamaged tree. And then there's the smell, which was no where as permeating as at our base, the Winn-Dixie store in a not-so-great section on the east side of the city. On our first night there, we were all abruptly awakened by an extra strong blast of stench: either the wind shifted or someone opened the door to the grocery store and a concentrated dose of rotting meat wafted our way.

We arrived at the Winn-Dixie operation on Thursday, October 13 after a 13-hour drive, unloaded the large coffee urn, supplies and hundreds of tee shirts donated by neighbors & friends, and with the help of some neighbors in the asphalt parking lot, figured out how to put up our three tents and inflate our air mattresses. And then we started taking care of dogs, which is what we primarily did for the next seven days.

INTAKE TENT The first of the three adjoining kennel tents. The only cooling was from fans attached to balky generators that let us down frequently.

CONTINUE WITH
IN THE EYE OF THE STORM:
KATRINA "A-TEAM" TRIP HERE