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Saturday, September 10, 2005

Warm and Fuzzy Hurricane Animal Story Blogging
Posted by Jill | 8:33 AM

I'm amazed at the disconnect between MSNBC's Bushwhoring television coverage and the excellent blogging that the network's correspondents are doing. The biggest surprise, of course, has been Brian Williams' willingness to pull aside the curtain around the Great God Bush, but everyone's been doing a great job over there.

Catching up with other blog entries at MSNBC, I found another Heartwarming Animal Story to share with you. I find these stories to be milk of magnesia alleviating the heartburn of rage over the official response to this disaster.

Heather Allan, NBC News Coordinating Producer:

It was Sunday night, Aug. 28, and the storm was due to hit on Monday morning. We were at the Superdome in this absolutely pouring down, squalling rain. The winds had already started to pick up. Most of the thousands of people who were trying to get into the Superdome had already managed to get in. They were just about to close the doors and lock down for the night.

That’s when I saw a man walking down and talking to cop cars and National Guard people all along the way in the pouring rain. He had a puppy in his arms. They said to him, "you can go in, but you can’t take your dog with you."

He kept saying, "Look man, it’s a puppy. If I left him at home, he would just die."

So I looked at Tom Baer, our satellite truck operator, and I said, "Tom, we gotta do it."

He nodded. So I went out into the rain and I said, "We’ll look after your dog for you."

In the pouring rain, he gave me his name, Joe Torres, and I gave him our numbers, and he went into the Superdome and we took the puppy.

Well, the puppy was with us the entire time. He sat out the hurricane with us. He actually sat it out in "Swampboy," the name of our big satellite truck. He is part-pit bull, part-Labrador, with a golden color. He is just a lovely puppy, just a true baby. In the eight days we’ve had him, we’ve all just fell in love with him. But, most especially, Tom fell in love with him.

Tom is this big, 6'6", heavily-built, wonderful, kind-hearted man. He has been all over the world with me in the most terrible places. He got closer and closer to the puppy, as did we all. As a matter of fact, having the puppy with us through these terrible days was the one thing that kept a lot of us going.

Joe had named him "Cain," but we called him "Storm."

Tom made elaborate plans to keep him and take him off to Miami and give him a good life. But we always knew in our heart of hearts that if the owner came back, we’d have to give him back because we were just caretakers. Tom took the truck out for emergency repairs and got him all checked out and got him all his shots. In the ten days we had him he almost doubled in size.

Then, yesterday, we got a call from a little church in Duncanville, Texas, near Dallas, which is where Joe Torres finally ended up. We were the first call that he made to see if he could get his puppy back.

We were all heart broken, because we had started to hope that Tom could keep the dog. We did tell Joe that since he was in strange circumstances, we would be happy to keep the dog and make sure he has a wonderful home for the rest of his life. But he was absolutely adamant that he get the dog back.

Then I spoke to a lovely lady named Polly, who has eight New Orleans people staying with her in her little church in Duncanville. I explained the situation to her. She said, "I know that it’s going to break Tom’s heart, but Joe has nothing else in the whole world except his puppy."

She said I know he looks like a bit of a vagabond, but she said that they found him a job. Joe starts his new job and his new life in Duncanville today.

So we had a little cry, Tom Baer and I. Tom will drive the puppy to Dallas and see that he gets there properly, back to his family, back to Joe. The one thing Tom said to me was, "It shows me that you need something else in your life other than a satellite truck."


It seems to me that the best thing Tom Baer could do to honor the role this puppy played in his life is to go to one of the many animal shelters that are teeming with homeless dogs and adopt one. Or two. I'm sure there are dogs who would LOVE to go travelling around on a satellite truck. He can even buy the dog a jaunty bandanna.
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