Melissa Lipani’s emotions since arriving in Houston on Wednesday have boomeranged around the spectrum — tears one minute and joy the next.
The Millcreek resident and Mountain West Regional Network Specialist for Best Friends Animal Society has witnessed happy reunions with residents and their pets in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.
But she’s also seen the organization’s hastily constructed shelter take in three dogs whose owner had drowned in the hurricane’s floodwaters.
“That was pretty hard to see those dogs and know that there will be no chance to reunite with their owner,” she said. “That’s pretty heartbreaking.”
The Best Friends Animal Society’s Rescue and Reunite Center in Conroe, Texas, at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds is taking in animals rescued off the street, animals that have been evacuated from area pet shelters and animals belonging to people in a Red Cross shelter on the fairgrounds.
“Any and all animals that are from the flood zone or need help,” Best Friends spokesman Eric Rayvid said.
Rayvid is on the ground in Conroe along with Lipani and estimates the center has taken in about 250 dogs and “a handful” of cats so far — with a process that includes taking in the animals, vetting them for vaccinations, scanning them for microchips and triangulating where they were found.
Fewer cats have been rescued so far, Rayvid said, because they are generally more self-sufficient than dogs and like to hide.
“In the coming days, we’re going to see a lot more cats as the floodwaters recede,” he said.
Thirty Best Friends staff members and 150 volunteers are keeping the shelter open 24 hours a day for people who are looking for their lost pets, and are trying to make the animals as comfortable as possible in the interim.
“While they’re here, we need to make sure that we’re continuing to socialize them, love them, walk them and hang out with them,” Rayvid said. “Make them feel like normal pets.”
Lipani has been putting dogs through the intake process after flying into Houston on an hour’s notice. After a 15½ hour day Thursday, she slept for five hours and got right back to work Friday, cleaning cages, walking dogs and taking more animals.
“I have the skills to do this and I really wanted to help,” she said. “I think we’ve learned a lot of lessons from previous disasters and obviously, we want to do better, we want to get these animals back with their owners.”
Locally, the Community Animal Welfare Society (CAWS) sent four cargo vans full of animal carriers and supplies to Houston and Austin to bring shelter dogs and cats back to Utah to clear space in areas of need in Texas.
CAWS Director of Operations Dede Minardi said the vans will pick up 100 to 120 dogs and 50 to 60 cats to distribute among several organizations in Utah for adoption.
CAWS plans to take in 60 dogs alone and is attempting to raise $10,000 on its website to vet the animals and get them adopted locally.
“You would hope that if something like that happened here, we would have people around the country doing the same thing for us,” Minardi said.
Lipani doesn’t have a return ticket back to Salt Lake City yet and anticipates she could be in Texas for “a couple of weeks.”
Until then — and until as many animals as possible are reunited with their owners — the Best Friends shelter will stay open.
“In the coming days, when people figure out what their new normal is going to be, that’s when they’re coming to figure out where the rest of their family is,” Rayvid said.