Take action for the animals
Veterinary technician Donna Lasser is one of many veterinary professionals that have joined forces to assist animals holding makeshift spay and neuter clinics worldwide. The Hope area vet tech founded the Canadian Animal Assistance Team after Hurricane Katrina.
By Simone Rolph
The Hope Standard
Oct 19 2006
In a major disaster who will take care of the animals? Hurricane Katrina taught a lot of lessons, one being how to scramble teams of Canadian veterinarians, technicians and vet assistants to help rescue injured and displaced animals.
Founded by a veterinarian assistant and Hope resident, Donna Lasser, the hurricane-inspired Canadian Animal Assistance Team (CAAT) contacted the Human Society of the United States offering their help in the wake of Katrina.
Donations started flooding in allowing us to take in 82 vets and techs from everywhere from Vancouver to Whitehorse, said Lasser.
They arrived in rotating teams - first shaken by the images of dogs on rooftops abandoned and pining for rescue. The volunteers first moved quickly to set up a triage center in downtown New Orleans. From that air-conditioned semi-tractor trailer, the team began to search the flood-ravaged city for dogs, cats, iguanas, and birds - even fish in tanks.
“There are a lot of negative and painful memories,” says, Lasser. It is the miracles like the little cocker spaniel named Ginger she prefers to focus on. A frantic call had come through from an elderly woman notifying them that her Ginger had been left behind on the third floor of an apartment building. Up the pitch black stairs the team had to fight their way into the abandoned building. Finally breaking down the door of the apartment. “There was Ginger its tail wagging, just waiting for them. Everyone was crying; it is a lasting memory,” says Lasser.
“Katrina was a life-altering experience.”
Many of the stories were heartbreaking from the senior found dead on her couch, the team could only rescue her cats, the search dogs that had to be cooled down and bathed so the toxic waters didn’t claim their lives as well. Animals left in carriers found dead in the doorways awaiting their owner’s return.
And Lasser’s life was truly changed by Katrina taking on the challenge of working with the BC government to head up plans, infrastructure and a volunteer base to respond more quickly to future catastrophic disasters.
And the hands on work has never ended either after Katrina, with the team now 150 strong, invited by a lone veterinarian in Fiji to come to the aid of hunting dogs on Kadavu Island. Poison was the only mode to stop the exploding population. Ten team members arrived for two weeks last year spaying and neutering 290 dogs and 11 cats in a matter of days - “eighty per cent of the island’s dog population,” adds Lasser. Each dog was tagged after surgery to let government officials know that this dog, a non-reproducing animal, would not need to killed with strychnine. “The people had no choice,” says Lasser, but now through assistance and education the carnage should end. “It was an amazing trip.”
Lasser and the CAAT volunteers then set their sights on their own home country with numerous requests for help coming in from isolated communities where there is no SPCA, no animal control, no pounds and “vets few and far between.”
This month, Lasser returned from the Northwest Territories visiting the First Nation’s Dogrib and Dene communities of Rae Edso and Lutsei K’e. Using old boards, plastic tarps, broom handles for IV poles, and even rolls of paper towel, the team created a temporary vet clinic filled with donated drugs and medical supplies, in just two weeks spaying and neutering 110 dogs and treating 156 for medical conditions.
To control over-population bounties for dead dogs offered in isolated communities can tragically lead to the death of not only strays but cared for animals. Now the brightly coloured ear tags given each dog by CAAT marks them as non-reproducing animals protecting them from becoming potential victims in ‘dog shoot days.’
With a success-proven program coupling education and action there is no end to new initiatives for the society from spay and neuter programs in Thailand or Peru, to a large agricultural animal projects in Africa, to saving the sled dogs of Baffin Island.
And back now back home, Lasser’s work will continue using the lessons taught by Katrina in New Orleans. “What we don’t want is a repeat in B.C.” With seniors unwilling to leave their animals behind in an emergency leading to the possible loss of life for not only the animal but its loving owner, the goal, says Lasser, “is to have a protocol in place for animal evacuation and emergency care for all cities in Canada” - should disaster strike here.
For more information on CAAT and Lasser’s work check out www.caat-canada.org.
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