Help San Leon Texas "A small drinking community with a large fishing problem..."

shared by someone today on the WU blogs
SAN LEON TEXAS
"A small drinking community with a large fishing problem..."
Devastated by Hurricane Ike September, 2008

Includes:
RECOVERY BLOG PHOTOS VIDEOS IKE-TV Media Coverage
ways to donate to the San Leon Relief Fund
CLICK HERE
even $1 or $5 will help

Ike Dogs I Transported

On Tuesday, September 30th, I posted a blog titled about having just returned from a "whirlwind trip to Anahuac, TX" and transporting some dogs from a shelter to rescue in the TX Hill Country. Below is a news story related to that transport.

That's not me in the picture & I'm not mentioned in the article, but I swear I'm the "arranged [volunteer] transport" about which they speak. LOL I could not possibly care less about not being mentioned. If someone is in this for recognition or thanks, they don't need to be in it (and there are those in it for or the other, or both, sadly). This story gets across the points that need to be made, and that is awesome!! I love an article that can do that!! WOOHOO! Kudos to them!!

From the Kerrville Daily Times

Courage and compassion
Christine McEntyre holds one of the dogs rescued from Bridge City, Texas, after Hurricane Ike.
Photo by Jack Parker

Courage and compassion
By Alyson Chapman
The Daily Times

Published October 2, 2008
The tales of survival from Hurricane Ike are dramatic, chilling and heart-wrenching.

One group of people in Bolivar Peninsula rode out the massive storm in a church with a lion. Another couple clung to rafters until daybreak after their house began to break apart.

These are the stories told by the people who lived through Ike.

But there are stories of survival that cannot be told by the victims themselves.

They are true tales of beating the odds.

One such story is about five dachshunds, which now are living in Kerr County.

They were left at home in Bridge City when their owners evacuated from Ike’s rage.

The storm’s surge filled the house and yard with about 5 feet of water.

“The dogs were outside and were washed over the 4-foot fence,” said Christine McEntyre, who has taken in the dogs at her facility, Diamond Dachshund Rescue. “They apparently swam a distance together, and got onto something to get out of the water.”

The five dogs — three females and two males — gently were rounded up by an animal search and rescue team and were brought to the safety of the Beaumont Humane Society.

The dachshunds — although their specific ages are not known, range from very young to old — were covered in black sewage and salt brine.

The dogs were bathed in Beaumont and housed in a temporary emergency shelter for about two weeks.

The shelter then contacted McEntyre who arranged their transport from Beaumont to Kerrville.

Upon their arrival in Kerrville, the five dachshunds were excited. Not timid, they jumped up and licked on McEntyre.

“All are understandably uncertain of what’s happened in their lives, but they are all really sweet dogs that seem to be very personable, like laps, dislike cats and bark at the goats at my house,” she said.

It is unclear if the family of dachshunds are related.

Mariah, the obvious matriarch of the group, is white and tan. McEntyre estimated she may be older than 10. Miranda is middle-aged and has a maturity that suggests she may have had a litter of pups. The baby girl of the group is Marissa, who is quick and hard to catch.

There’s a black and tan male who’s now been named Rufus, and the red male is now named Wilbur.

The next step for this crew is a trip to the vet next week for heartworm testing, shots and spay or neutering.

After that, the doxies will be ready for adoption.

To the rescue

McEntyre and her Companion Animal Rescue & Response Team were deployed Anahuac to help care for animals affected by the storm.

McEntyre, Cayce Kovacs of Comfort and Tom Coker of San Antonio left Sept. 16 and returned four days later.

“When people evacuate, they need to take their pets,” McEntyre said. “There are resources available to house pets in hotels, boarding kennels, veterinarians, shelters and animal control facilities during disasters and emergencies.

“Never leave a pet behind because you don’t know how long you will be evacuated. As discovered with Ike, many people didn’t expect it to be as bad as it was, so they left their pets behind and no longer have homes or pets. The guilt and emotions suffered can be overwhelming and preventable.”

In Anahuac, the CARRT team joined with the International Fund for Animal Welfare and cared for 47 dogs, six cats and five goats.

The Humane Society and SPCA took in and rescued hundreds of animals after Ike, but that number doesn’t compare to the 10,000 pets rescued in Louisiana and Mississippi after Katrina.

In 2006, Congress passed the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act, which required states seeking FEMA assistance to accommodate pets and service animals in their plans for evacuating residents facing disasters.

Last year, Texas passed a similar law.

During the Katrina evacuation, many pet owners were not allowed to take their pets on evacuation buses and stayed behind, leaving them to perish with their beloved animals.

McEntyre did see animals who didn’t make it through Ike.

“Not all animals can be saved due to lack of resources, trained volunteers, time, shyness, fear and injuries the animals can have after a major event, and the delay in obtaining permission to enter the affected areas,” she said. “For trained national teams to get called in to help go into a disaster areas for search and rescue of animals over a large area is very difficult and time consuming.

“We need more responders who are able to take time away from home or work and are willing to go through the training required to deploy to help pets and animals.”

In the weeks since Ike roared ashore, volunteers slowly return home, but many pets won’t have a home to go home to.

“Many pets will go unclaimed by owners who lost everything and have no place to bring their pets home to,” McEntyre said. “There are others still left behind that need to be relocated and re-homed.”

For Mariah, Miranda, Marissa, Rufus and Wilbur who survived Ike’s fury, making it to the shelter was half the battle.

Now, they need a home.


See why I do this??? I love it!!!!! Diesel is expensive, so if anyone would like to donate a brand new Toyota Prius, just e-mail me and I will send you my street address. Any color is absolutely fine, and I mean that! Of course, there's a waiting list for those so I guess I could do with a Chevy HHR, they hold good-sized crates.

Houston Rescue Needs Some Assistance

THIS IS COURTESY POST
I am not personally familiar with the rescue seeking donations, but according to their PetFinder site, they are “an all-breed, no-kill, Not-For-Profit 501(c)(3) animal rescue organization committed to bringing Courage, Character and Compassion to Houston’s homeless pet population and making a positive difference in the lives of these stray and abandoned animals and the Houston community as a whole. 100% of every dollar donated goes directly to saving the life of a homeless animal.”

Houston, TX - HELP - Donations needed for Scout's Honor to help dogs

HELP - Donations needed for Scout's Honor to help dogs rescued from IKE and other rescued animals!!From: cperini@velaw.com
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:20:31 -0500
HELP - Donations needed for Scout's Honor to help dogs rescued from IKE and other rescued animals!!

Friends -- We NEED your help!!! Scout's Honor DESPERATELY needs your donations to help with animals taken in before and after Ike! Scout's Honor took in over 14 animals before Ike hit from the La Porte pound, then we rescued 9 puppies that were found under a maintenance building and 2 of these babies were injured when their little bodies were caught up in the plastic rings that cokes come in. They are requiring hydro-therapy and surgery too. Bentley and Lizzie were both rescued after Ike, along with little Bingo and Snoopy and the little kitty Dissy. The costs of taking in this many animals have been very high and we are once again having to close Scout's Honor intake program until we get enough donations to payoff our current vet and boarding bills for all of these doggies. We need to raise about $6,000 to get things back on track.

All of these animals are checked by a vet, given their shots, spayed or neutered, microchipped, given heartguard and flea control and any other medical conditions that they may have. It just quickly adds up. Scout's Honor also has to continue to care for the 80+ animals in their program. Here are just a few pics of the babies that have been saved.

You can the animals currently in Scout's Honor Adoption program at: www.scoutshonor.petdfinder.org -- a donation will help all of them.

Please consider making a tax deductible donation today by going to: http://www.scoutshonor.petfinder.org/

Or sending a check payable to 'Scout's Honor Rescue' and mailing it to:
Scout's Honor Rescue, Inc.
1302 Waugh Drive, PMB#245
Houston, Texas 77019-3908.
ANY AMOUNT HELPS AND NOTHING IS TOO SMALL! $15 pays for one day of boarding, $30 pays for shots, $35-125 pays for spaying and neutering ...anything helps!

Thanks so so much for your help and support!! Here are just a FEW of the babies you are helping!!!

Thanks. Cindy Perini

Opinions Regarding Donations for Animals Following Disasters

There are lots of animal rescues needing help right now! If you donate, please make sure you are donating to ones that actually do help rescue from the areas affected. Sometimes that can mean one in Houston, in TX, or sometimes even OK, LA, well, that's what I had been saying...now that I have time to take a breath, or at least now that I'm making time to take a breath, let me give my opinion on donating to the large, national groups vs. the smaller, local groups...

I am still having a hard time with my thought process, so this might be about as clear as some of the standing water along the coast, but let me try here. There are a lot of e-mails circulating discouraging people from donating to some of the larger organizations and instead encouraging donations to local groups. Uhm, I kinda do that here ;) I want to offer an explanation of what are just my personal opinions on this. Granted, I do have some knowledge of how things work, but I certainly don’t claim to know it all or even nearly as much as I should. I’m no good to those whom I choose to help if I have too many irons in the fire so I have to choose my battles wisely.

Here goes...one argument people often offer when they ask that people not give to the large groups, for instance the HSUS (Humane Society of the United States) is that the HSUS does not have shelters to which they actually take the animals. That may be true because even though you will see names like “Humane Society of Southeast Texas”, they are not a HSUS shelter; however, and this is a big however, the HSUS has expenses related to rescue! Take a look at this article. That had to be paid for somehow!

Now, where do I stand on donating to the HSUS? Well, if I could be assured that my donation went to rescue relief vs. a campaign to save the blind white salamander that lives in an aquifer in San Antonio, sure I’d be willing to donate! Do I think the blind white salamander isn’t important? Nope, didn’t say that. Just not my thing, no room for him on my plate (yuck, nasty thought). Have I had time to check into it to see if I can donate to a rescue fund only? Nope. Wait, since I first posted this on my Weatherunderground.com blog, I have! I found this, information about how donations made directly to the HSUS Disaster Relief Fund are used! Here's more info on their Emergency Services Animal Rescue Team.

Another reason that I personally believe it is important to give directly to the shelters/rescues in the affected areas immediately after a disaster is because they need the assistance immediately and getting the assistance and supplies from the state and charities such as PetsMart Charities, SPCA, & HSUS takes time (especially the assistance from the state). Also, once those charities & organizations pull out and the attention moves on, they need those funds to help them keep chugging along. The affects of these storms are felt so long after the clouds have passed, after the media attention has moved on, after America’s short attention span has waned.

And, one final reason (though there are so many) is... There is one group, I’m still not quite sure I want to give their name so, I’ll just say it’s not SPCA and it’s not HSUS, that keeps just regurgitating everything that they pull out of newspapers, verbatim, and even from flippin’ e-mails from Yahoo! rescue groups (that is what put me over the edge) and then just throwing all their “donate!” “give!” “NOW” buttons and links all over the place on the e-mails they send out. If you could see these messages (I have GOT to go find one and put it in my blog), you would see how much they blanket the message with pleas. If you click on their website, you will find that they are a heavy-handed animal rights organization. Now, there is nothing wrong with being an animal rights organization; however, there is absolutely, positively something wrong with using a disaster to further your agenda and raise funds that you then use for that agenda vs. for rescue of animals in disasters.

There are lots of excellent rescue groups out there, just watch out for those who are less than reputable or those that are less than straight forward. Have a favorite breed? Give to a breed rescue in honor of hurricane victims. Need a recommendation? I really do have good contacts in 501(c)3 rescue organizations across the country and will be happy to pass along any info you’d like.

Aye, Chihuahua!

O.K., It's not Ike-related, but it could easily result in a flood of Chihuahuas in shelters, much like we saw after the Taco Bell commercials. Please see this article from the Best Friends Network.

Consider printing a few posters and asking your local theaters if they will do the responsible thing and allow you to post one or two. Come on, it's good Karma!

Beverly Hills Chihuahua: Are you bracing yourself for the movie’s release?

September 30, 2008 : 6:36 PM

We can help!

Like the movies “101 Dalmatians” and “Beethoven” before it, the release of “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” has animal welfare organizations concerned that Chihuahuas will be the next victims of our trend-crazed and impulse-purchase culture—even more than they already are.

Since word of the movie first began to leak out, those in the animal welfare community have been wondering what they can do to slow the rush of Chihuahua-buying surely to follow the movie. So were we at Best Friends.

After careful consideration and a little background research by our A Puppy Store Free LA staff, we discovered that the movie does have a rescue angle. That’s good news! It turns out that the movie’s main Chihuahua character, Papi, was rescued. (click here to read his story)

But still—some people will probably want a Chihuahua after seeing the movie, and we hope they don’t head to the classified ads in their local paper, to the Internet (unless they’re going to Petfinder) or to a pet store. To read Best Friends’ press release and position on the movie, click here.

Shelters around the country are already bursting with Chihuahuas, particularly in Los Angeles, the very place where the movie takes place. So we put our heads together and came up with ways that we can all spread the word that if you’re in the market for a Chihuahua, adopting one is the way to go.

How you can help spread the message: ADOPT a Chihuahua
**COMING SOON: A PSA from Best Friends about adopting a dog**

1.) Download, print and hang up the poster (click the poster to download)

2.) Send this story to anyone you know who might be considering getting a Chihuahua

3.) Check out the hundreds of Chihuahuas available for adoption right now in Los Angeles shelters
-Los Angeles city shelters
-Los Angeles county shelters

4.) Find an adoptable Chihuahua near you. Go to: www.petfinder.com or www.adoptapet.com. (You’ll see that Drew Barrymore, voice of Chloe in the movie is on their home page with her rescued dog!)

Link to this story