Rescued: Saving Animals from Disaster [NOOK Book]

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Rescued

New World Library

Chapter One

Only in the past hundred years have animals become full-fledged, indoor-dwelling members of American families. Prior to this change in domestic life, most pet lovers had a casual relationship with their yard dogs or neighborhood cats. In bygone times, animals would no more be allowed inside the house than chickens could lay eggs on the dining room table.

Animals and humans forming socially and emotionally interdependent family units has had a profound impact on disaster preparedness and rescue operations. Hurricane Katrina indisputably proved that people today will risk their lives to keep from abandoning their pets. Whether decision makers like it, think it is a nuisance, or are pleased that the obvious has finally been recognized, today this is true: Animals are members of the family. Now every aspect of American society must deal with it. No longer is it permissible to separate people from the animals who share their homes, sleep in their beds, and have become their cherished friends.

Dr. Melissa Hunt, associate director of clinical training in the department of psychology of the University of Pennsylvania, studied the psychological impact of being forced to abandon a pet during the evacuations following Hurricane Katrina. She recruited survivors of thehurricane for the study. Half of them had lost their pets during the storms and flooding, and half had not gone through pet loss. Dr. Hunt told us that people who lost their pets experienced significantly more acute stress during evacuation and were significantly more depressed, showing more symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder than survivors who safely evacuated with their pets. Based on her study, Dr. Hunt concludes, "You were just as likely to be depressed if you lost your pet as if you lost your home." The results of Dr. Hunt's study suggest that failure to implement effective companion animal evacuation policies carries a high cost in terms of the human survivors' mental health.

Our society has made animals dependent on the kindness and generosity of humans. In return, animals serve as conduits for people to fulfill their primal need for connection to nature. The animals in a home may be a person's only and deepest source of unconditional love. Millions of people need this kind of love - love without judgment, artifice, or stinginess - in a universe of emotional and spiritual isolation. Animals bridge the gap between our hearts and minds. As became apparent after Hurricane Katrina and other disasters, many people will die rather than lose a relationship for which there is no human substitute.

Animals Are Essential to the Good Life

Even though animals play large roles in mythology, folklore, and religious practices of cultures around the globe, until recently they were not members of the American family. Only in the past century did dogs transform from working, herding, hunting, mostly outdoor protectors into car-riding, blanket-stealing, birthday party recipients. Among the wealthier classes of society, cats have always enjoyed hearth-occupying status. But in most rural and working-class American households, cats had to graduate from being exterminators who rid the property of mice and lived in the barn to being cuddly creatures with their own brightly decorated food and water bowls in the kitchen. Horses no longer earn their keep by pulling plows. Today they provide city dwellers with companionable rides through the countryside. Horses are more likely to be gentled, not broken; stabled, not tethered. Rather than leading the charge in battle on bloody fields, horses are dominant in the growing area of animal-assisted therapy, where they give rides to at-risk or disabled children and adults.

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Excerpted from Rescued by Allen Anderson Linda Anderson Copyright © 2006 by Allen and Linda Anderson. Excerpted by permission.
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