On August 28, 2005 I got a frantic call from Colleen Fleury of Sherwood Boxers saying that Hurricane Katrina was making a bee-line towards New Orleans with expected winds of up to 200 miles per hour. Her shift, as a nurse was over, but she had volunteered to stay on to let others with families go home...this was as long as she could go home, gather up her 3 dogs and bring them to the hospital to ride out the hurricane in a storage room. The hospital administrator said absolutely NOT...she could put them on the loading dock (which has no front) but she could not bring them into any part of the hospital. She called me crying asking what should she do? She said she could leave enough food and water out for 3 days and then just clean up any mess they made but she didn't know how long it might take to get back to her house after the storm. I told her in no uncertain terms, go home, pack up your dogs and come ride the storm out at my house. I live 75 miles northwest of New Orleans and we weren't expected to get the brunt of the storm. Her mother, father and sister live in the same neighborhood as she and were evacuating to Lafayette to a cousin's house so they ended up taking their 2 Boxers, 1 Schanuzer and Colleen's 14 year old Boxer, Devin. Colleen packed up her other 2 dogs, 3 changes of clothes and rode out the storm with me. Well thank goodness she did, as her house substained the winds of Hurricane Katrina but when the levees broke she lost everything and had 3-4 feet of water in her home. Not only that but the authorities would not let ANYONE back into the area for 6 weeks!!! If she had left her dogs in the house even with food and water, they would have perished and Colleen would now be a ward of the State mental institution!!! But I digress... When we found out that her family also would not be able to return home and her couisn wouldn't let the dogs in their house and that they were being boarded at $10 a day per dog...I said...bring them over! So now I went from a 3 dog household to 9 dogs...and I'm talking about a small house!!! A wonderful friend of ours, Gerald Kleinpeter, had just lost 2 of his boxers from cancer and offered to take 2 of the dogs off of our hands for a few weeks (little did we know it would be for over 8 months)...so the Schnauzer and one female Boxer was sent to him. So this left us with 7 Boxers. Here I have to interject how proud I am of my 3 girls.

Continued on Devin's Story Page 3