The Best Thing to Ever Happen

Dear Dog and Horse Lovers... what are we but the choices we make? How will the rest of the world judge us? Do we care? When it comes to dogs, I would have to say that "Yes. I care." People have choices but dogs have none. Today, let us use our rational minds _along with our hearts, when making decisions that affect the four legged (and two legged) creatures in our lives..


The following story is from our Katrina Files. It was written soon after Dale and I returned from the "belly of the Beast." Ninth Ward, New Orleans, LA, 2005. Please share the message..

The Best Thing to Ever Happen

Old decaying buildings defaced with obscene language, bars across every window - here was a neighborhood that was bad long before Katrina came to town. So often, you’d break open these little houses only to find rows of brand new clothes with their tags still in tact, hanging from the rafters. Boxes of new sneakers thrown helter skelter in the room, electric power tools, still in their packages and stacks of CDs and DVDs to accompany the big screen Tv’s and state of the art sound systems that were never installed.

These were the houses of looters but they fled when the flood waters came. Time after time, we broke in only to find the same sorry sight. The looters had gone but they left their Pit Bulls, Cane Corsos,Rotties, Chows and "guard dog-mixes" behind to guard their stash. Sadly, these dogs had been tied to the house. They’d been given a death sentence by uncaring, compassion-less human beings who only cared for themselves.


What kind of society creates this lack of concern for others? Some argue poverty while others argue it comes from a long history of free handouts an “Entitlement mentality” where “Me” means everything and “You” means nothing. It’s a philosophy that’s difficult to argue with when you’ve just left your sixth house to have the macabre ornamentation of a dead, bloated dog hanging from a chain, strung across the front or back porch rail of a looter’s home. We can’t show you these pictures. They’re too hard to look at. They were almost too hard to take. But I bet you share the rage I felt when I focused my lens on the decomposing dog, his face frozen in agony as he gasped for his last breath as the flood waters rose higher than his chain would allow.

No, I can’t show you that picture, but I can share with you my only comfort. That dog is dead now. He is free from his chain and the horrible people who kept him there, to guard a stack of movies they’ll never watch, a pile of sneakers they’ll never wear and some power tools they probably, never would have used. Those luckless guard dogs died in the flood. They didn’t have a chance and sadly, for them, it was the best thing that ever happened.