Not Left Behind Quotes

“Some animals had been stranded for close to two weeks when we got to them. Some were on porches, some marooned on car hoods and roofs. Doing whatever they could to survive." - Troy Snow”
― Best Friends Animal Society, Not Left Behind: Rescuing the Pets of New Orleans

“You're goig through a neighborhood and there's no people, no grass, no birds, no animals... and it's beautiful but you know how screwed up it is that it looks that way, what it means that it looks that way." - Kit Boggio”
― Best Friends Animal Society, Not Left Behind: Rescuing the Pets of New Orleans

“As a national community, we made mistakes in responding to Katrina. But we also did things right. In our ignorance, we insisted that people leave without their pets. But in our compassion we went back, and we made sure that as many as possible were, in the end, not left behind.”
― Best Friends Animal Society, Not Left Behind: Rescuing the Pets of New Orleans

“Before the Best Friends team got out on the water on their own, they spent several days ferrying already-rescued pets from the Jefferson Parish shelter, an official city facility, to the St. Francis Animal Sanctuary in Tylertown. It was clear to Troy that most of these animals had never seen the inside of a shelter before: "Their eyes seemed to be saying to me, 'Where am I? And where are my people?”
― Best Friends Animal Society, Not Left Behind: Rescuing the Pets of New Orleans

“And this miniature poodle was trapped in the alley, struggling to hold his head out of the water by propping his front paws up on a piece of steel frame." They clambered in and got the dog out. Days later, after a good bath at Tylertown, the little grey poodle they had rescued turned out to be white as snow.”
― Best Friends Animal Society, Not Left Behind: Rescuing the Pets of New Orleans

“Every day, when you got that first animal, I didn't care what else happened. As long as you got that first one, it was a good day." - Jeff Popwich”
― Best Friends Animal Society, Not Left Behind: Rescuing the Pets of New Orleans

“This is one of those rescues I'll never forget," recalls Troy. "Like everybody else, I had my own stereotypes about Pit Bulls, so I was a little nervous when we saw these two on top of an almost fully submerged car. And then one of them jumped into the water and started swimming right at us. You could tell by his eyes that he was a little confused, but he definitively wanted to get to us. I didn't know if he was coming to say, Get out of my territory, or if he was coming for help. I took a picture of him as he swam toward me, and then this big old pit bull head is staring up at me, on my side of the boat. I put down my camera, took a deep breath, then reached down and just grabbed this dog and pulled him up into the boat."

It was an anxious moment for Troy, but his fears were soon allayed. "He was just nuzzling his head into my neck, and his tail was just thumping against the side of the boat, just thumping so loud, bam bam bam. He would have climbed right inside of you. This dog had been trapped on the roof of a car in his own driveway, no clean water, no food, waiting for his owners to come back. He's sunburned. He's sick. But the most important thing in that dog's life right then was being loved. He couldn't get close enough to me.”
― Best Friends Animal Society, Not Left Behind: Rescuing the Pets of New Orleans