Toby -- The Story of Our Hurricane Katrina Refugee

This is the story of Toby, the Love of Our Lives. He came to us on our first wedding anniversary in March of 2006 at the age of 3 (we were told). It's lengthy, but such stories need to be told so that more adoptable pets can find loving forever homes.

He had lived his entire life with a family in Louisiana. Then Katrina struck, and his family was mandated to evacuate their home to escape the storm. But Toby had to stay behind in the home because pets aren’t allowed in evacuation shelters. That poor dog weathered the storm in the house -- alone, dark, terrified.

After several days the hurricane abated. But it can take up to 3-4 weeks for a family to be allowed to return to their home. Thankfully, somehow Toby survived to welcome his parents back home to him. Their house was spared, but their son wasn’t as fortunate. His home was destroyed, so he came to live with his parents … ummmm, him and his CATS.

Now, everyone experienced with keeping adult dogs and/or cats knows that the two CAN be taught to cohabitate peacefully -- following about 2 weeks of pure hell. However, in the chaos resulting from something as catastrophic as Hurricane Katrina, I’m sure that the humans weren’t in any frame of mind to deal with that kind of thing. Of if they were, maybe they didn’t know it could be done, or whatever. Who knows?

So Toby was “surrendered” to a shelter -- and most of them there are kill facilities. It wasn’t looking good for Toby.

That is, until the volunteer from Labs4Rescue walked into that place and met the 150-pound hunk of chocolate Labrador retriever. This organization had volunteers going into every single shelter affected by the storm -- every single day. These kind people adopted any dog that they saw that even remotely resembled a Lab -- with money from their own pockets, which would never be refunded to them.

Nobody within the area could take Toby right away, so L4R put him up in a veterinarian’s boarding kennel for 3 weeks at their own expense, until a foster could be located. There he was completely vetted, brought up to date on his vaccines, checked for heartworm and proclaimed a healthy young dog.

L4R, headquartered in Connecticut, found a foster home for Toby and several other rescued Labs in his vicinity in Louisiana. From there, the very kind volunteers transported Toby and friends via their pipeline of relays to Connecticut -- again, using their own vehicles and all at great personal expense. Upon arrival in Connecticut, the dogs all spent a couple of weeks having their personalities evaluated for adoptability.

We learned of Toby’s arrival via the L4R website, and requested to meet him, and we fostered him. After a couple of months of sharing our lives with Toby, we knew that we had become Foster Failures -- and chose to adopt him forever. He had severe separation anxiety, and was absolutely terrified of storms (go figure). But know what? Everybody has issues -- and he’s entitled to those. Over the years, he has come to learn that we always return, but he is still a little anxious when one of us leaves, and he still hates storms.

That’s probably the smartest thing my husband or I have ever done in our lives. Today, 9-year-old Toby is a significant bright spot in our lives. He’s a senior, and constantly watches tenderly over my elderly mother who lives with us now. He is the finest companion, watchdog, babysitter to our children, gentle lover of our parrots, and Our Very Best Friend ever.

Moral of the Story: Please Don’t Buy -- Adopt. You’ll never be sorry.


　

 

What a wonderful story, I'm so pleased that Toby has found a loving home with you

 

Toby was lucky to found a new family.
And yes adopting a dog will make you meet a good new member of the family.

 

Very good to know one potential tragedy has ended as a happy story. So that L4R outfit only works with Labs? Are there any other groups which work with other breeds?

 

Wow that is amazing. I can't understand how a family who had to leave their dog behind came home fortunately to find him alive and STILL ended up surrendering him. I'm not judging but there is NOTHING that would make me leave my dogs behind if a storm was coming unless I was1000% sure I couldn't take them. Even if I had to leave all my posessions behind so they could fit in the car and I had to sleep in the car with them.

But you are right, adopting dogs is one of the most amazing things peopel can do.

 

Depends on the list of priorities I suppose. Some people put their dogs somewhere at the bottom of the list together with the dirty laundry. The only thing I am sure of is that the owners are always at the top of the list where the dogs are concerned. Sad, isn't it?

 

Wow! This almost brought me to tears. I must say both of you are lucky to find each other. What about some photos? We would love to see him with the family.

 

Absolutely- we are always the priorities of our animals but they are not always ours. So sad.

 

Victor, Labs4Rescue is specific to Labradors -- I’m so happy that you’re interested in looking into rescuing a dog!!!

But nearly every breed you can think of has rescues devoted to re-homing dogs of its specific breed.

If your choice is Golden Retrievers, just Google “Golden Retriever rescues in < insert your town or state >“ and you’ll get lots of links to area rescues for that breed.

You can also go directly to petfinders.com because many breed-specific rescue organizations list their adoptable pets on that site.

 

Thanks for the info. It will take some work looking for dog rescue ops here. Malaysia is not exactly a very dog-friendly country. Thailand, in the part where I was staying, didn't need any dog rescue. Just about everyone loves dogs and there are always people feeding the strays. Some, I have seen with my own eyes, even make a point of buying food everyday specifically to feed the strays. Some even buy 50-kg sacks of good dog food just to do that.

 

What an awesome story! I would love to see a picture of Toby!

 

I'm happy that Toby has a home now. After all that, he definitely deserves one. So much experience in a dog's life...it makes you wonder if dogs have a memory similar to humans. For example, does Toby remember everything that happened? Can a dog have nightmares about things that have happened to them and in their life.