Cynthia was out in New Orleans today rescuing dogs. We will be posting pictures from her trip shortly. She explained how it works: Every morning, people from IFAW, CODE 3 Associates in Colorado (http://code3associates.org), and the Humane Society of St. Louis ( http://www.hsmo.org) get together to go out and rescue animals.

They pick up what animals they can and bring them to a staging area just outside of New Orleans where they are given immediate vet care. Critical dogs are brought right to the staging area before any others are captured. From there, trucks come and go between the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center bringing the animals from this staging area.

Many dogs scatter when they try to rescue them. They can basically run in any direction since the city is so empty. They run down the highway, down streets, or wherever. The rescuers will leave a lot of food and big gallon containers of water everywhere so the animals can eat and drink after the rescuers leave. They don't have time at this point to spend too many minutes chasing down a dog that decides to run away.

Other dogs are thrilled to get rescued and come right up to the rescuers. They are put in the truck and brought to the staging area.

They also spend a lot of time going door to door finding dogs in houses or dogs in fenced in yards. They are given specific addresses by many people looking for their dogs. She was able to see how high the water was on all of these houses. It looks now as if "a giant ash tray was dumped on the city" from all of the soot and debris left over from the dried up water and the whole city smells like a flooded basement.

Some of the dogs that are deemed as non-critical are given food and water and a note is made to pick them up tomorrow or whenever. This is especially true for the dogs who are indoors. The reason they cannot take them all is because there is not room at Lamar. This is the most frustrating part, according to Cynthia. There are many places all over the country wanting to take huge amounts of dogs and space could be freed up at Lamar to go out and get animals still out in the city. Unfortunately, all the regulations now put in place on taking dogs out of the state prevent this.

We will post more details of her trip as we get them. She is going out again tomorrow with these groups, so I guess now we can add ProjectStarfish.org as an official rescue organization!

More about the Humane Society of St. Louis: Cynthia went out with two of their guys and they were fantastic. Great to work with and she learned more and more about the animal welfare problems in this country. The two men are "state wide investigators" and deal with resuces, animal abuse cases, busting up puppy mills and pit bull fighting. Many of the people who have committed crimes against animals have been locked away because of men like these. There are many photos of them that she took today (check back at about 9PM ET for photos). They are wearing the gray shirts with the black pants. "Two of the coolest guys I have met", says Cynthia.