Katrina aftermath includes Gulf Coast puppy boom

GULFPORT, Miss. -- Puppies are popping up everywhere amid the rubble left by Hurricane Katrina.

Animal welfare workers are seeing the tip of what they fear will be a big boom in dog births in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi hammered by the storm.

Officials say more than 6,000 pets were saved in the region after Katrina came ashore Aug. 29, and many of them were relocated to new homes elsewhere in the country. An unknown number drowned in the floodwaters or died later of injuries.

But thousands of animals remain, and humane organizations are beginning to see the result of even small numbers of animals running loose for weeks in neighborhoods where fences were flattened and owners fled.

"I've never seen so many puppies in my life," said Manny Maciel, an animal control officer from New Bedford, Mass., who has made two trips south to help trap loose dogs and cats in New Orleans and Mississippi.

Earlier this month, Maciel pulled 10 puppies and their mother from beneath a porch in a particularly hard-hit section of Biloxi. On another two-hour shift he found seven puppies and seven more dogs.

Maciel took all the dogs to the Humane Society of South Mississippi, where a shelter built for 75 animals now holds about 250 dogs and cats on any given day, including nearly 50 puppies. The shelter is the largest operating on the Mississippi coast.

Tara High, executive director of the not-for-profit group, said workers have yet to see a big spike in cat births, but there's no doubt what dogs have been doing since the hurricane.

"We're beginning to get litters now," said High, a board member thrust into the job in the post-Katrina frenzy when the former director quit unexpectedly.

New puppies are brought in daily both by residents and workers such as Maciel, who is among eight professional trappers working with the Humane Society of the United States to help capture animals running loose in the hurricane zone. They use harmless wire cages baited with food and lassos to capture dogs and cats.

A big part of the job for Maciel and partner Janis Moore of Springfield, Vt., is encouraging pet owners to help stem the puppy boom by having their animals spayed or neutered.

Maciel and Moore drive through mostly abandoned neighborhoods checking reports of stray animals and asking people to let them "fix" their pets for free.

Animals without owners often wind up at the shelter, where workers are overwhelmed despite the trickle of volunteers coming through to help.

High is proud that of the 300 or so animals that had to be euthanized in November at the shelter, all were too old, sick or aggressive to be adopted. New owners adopted 378 other dogs and cats.

As many as 75 new animals arrive daily at the shelter, including entire litters of puppies, and there is no immediate end in sight despite the work of the trappers and the push to get animals spayed and neutered.

"It's frustrating," said a weary High, who has worked every day but Thanksgiving since Katrina. "The animals do not stop coming in. The phone does not stop ringing."