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Must See Katrina Documentary Airs on PBS
If you ever questioned the strong bond between pets and humans, you won’t ever again after seeing MINE.
It’s been almost five years since Hurricane Katrina hit the Louisiana coast becoming one of the worst disasters in U.S. history. Seeing thousands of people fight for survival was heartbreaking. Then seeing the thousands of pets that had to be left behind was just as hard to take as we all watched it all unfold on television. When Geralyn Pezanoski heard about the rescue efforts of so many dedicated animal lovers, she decided to capture it on film. MINE is the culmination of six weeks of filming in New Orleans.
MINE airs this Tuesday, February 16th on the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning weekly series Independent Lens on PBS, and is hosted by actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. I had the extreme pleasure of seeing the film, and it is simply extraordinary, powerful…moving. I talked talked with Pezanoski about MINE, and her journey.
Aarff.com: What made you want to film this documentary?
Pezanoski: A few weeks after Katrina, I got an email from a friend who had been in New Orleans rescuing animals. Her pictures were shocking and there was this overwhelming sense of the helplessness of these animals. I felt like not only did our country completely fail its people, but now we left all these defenseless animals to die in an empty city. And these animals were people’s pets – pets they weren’t allowed to evacuate with. It was infuriating and I felt compelled to do something. I
Courtesy: Independent Lens
organized a volunteer crew to travel to New Orleans, where we filmed rescue efforts and then created PSAs to benefit the Humane Society of Louisiana.
The idea of the documentary came months later, when I saw that many people were just beginning to return and were looking for their pets that had been transported to safety all over the country. I had fostered and then adopted one of these “Katrina pets” and the question that loomed was “what would I do if someone came forward to claim Nola?”
We experience the greatest joys and deepest sorrows through our relationships with our pets, so naturally this was a very emotional subject. As a result of this unprecedented tragedy you have thousands of people who have been separated from their companions, and thousands of animal lovers who have rescued, adopted and nurtured these animals back to health. All of them are deeply invested and many have differing views about what’s best for the animals. Having witnessed the devastation and spent time with distraught residents and well as having fostered one of these traumatized “Katrina pets,” I understood some of the complexities involved in this situation. I empathized with people on both sides of the custody battles, and I felt compelled to tell their stories.
Aarff.com: I remember vividly that little white fluffy dog, struggling to get onto one of the evacuation buses. It’s owner already on board. Whatever happened to that little guy?
Pezanoski: It was one of the most heartbreaking moments caught on camera and there was a huge public outcry in response to it. Someone was compelled to offer a sizable reward for reuniting the dog and his boy, but despite an early news report that Snowball was found, that was never verified and no one ever claimed the reward.
Aarff.com: You feature several people who were forced to leave behind their pets, what was the ratio of successful reunions versus those still fighting to get their pets back?
Actual numbers are hard to come by because there was no central source for information. I’ve heard that anywhere from 2,000-3,000 of the 15,000 that were documented as having been transported out of the area, were reunited with their first families. I know of a handful of custody cases still active and many more where no resolution was reached and the original family has resigned themselves to moving on. I suspect the latter is true for the majority of people who were looking for their pets after the storms.
Aarff.com: Unless you are a pet owner, it is hard to describe the bond one establishes with their pet. For these people who lost everything, some even their human loved
Courtesy: Independent Lens
ones, their pet was their only connection left of their lives….explain.
Pezanoski: Like most people with pets, I understand and have experienced first hand the power of the human-animal bond. What I learned from Katrina survivors was how much more significant that bond can become in the face of great loss and upheaval. While it’s true that for some whose lives were turned up side down, caring for a pet had become a burden, it was very different for many, especially for subjects of MINE like Mavlin and Gloria, whose pet was their sole companion. They were distraught being apart from these animals who in many cases were the one “thing” they could hold onto from their life prior to the storm. It seemed to me a big part of that bond, was a sense of responsibility for the care and well-being of the animal and, as voiced by Jessie Pullins, a parental sort of love that goes beyond merely meeting the survival needs of the animal.
Aarff.com: I remember being a reporter in St. Louis when Katrina hit, and being at the Humane Society when dozens of animals were flown into St. Louis. I was there when those dogs arrived at the Humane Society…all were scared and lost. Can you estimate how many pets had to be adopted out?
Pezanoski: The number of animals that were sent to shelters around the country, documented and posted on PetFinder, was about 15,000. It’s impossible to know how many more were taken and either fell or were pushed through the cracks in the system.
Aarff.com: What do you want people to take away from MINE?
Pezanoski: My hope as we approach the 5 year anniversary of Katrina, is that we hold ourselves, both as individuals and as a nation, to a set of values that will not allow a tragedy like this to happen again. I was profoundly moved by the compassion and empathy I witnessed as individuals stepped up in response to Katrina. It also struck me that there are sometimes limits to our compassion, that for some of us it’s easier to feel compassion towards animals than towards other human beings or even ourselves. For others, compassion is reserved exclusively for human beings as though expanding that would come at the expense of humans. I hope that MINE challenges us to see beyond our limitations and to see the potential of expanding the scope of our compassion to be more inclusive. I believe we stand to gain as a civilization when we understand the value and interconnectedness of all living beings and the dynamic environment we live in.
Aarff.com: You mentioned earlier that you fostered and eventually adopted a “Katrina” dog…Nola. How did that come about?
Pezanoski: I met a snaggle-toothed, pointer boxer mix on October 24th at the Best Friends Sanctuary in Tyler Town Mississippi. She had been on the streets for almost 2 months after Katrina and was found wandering and starving to death in the Lower Ninth ward. I took her out for a walk around the grounds and she moved in the most awkward and bizarre way, alternately looking like Bambi on shaky new legs, and bounding around like a gazelle, practically taking flight. It turns out she had neurological problems and advanced heart worms. I returned every couple of days to find her in the same run, while the other dogs around her seemed to come and go. The odds seemed stacked particularly high against this little dog and though I hadn’t planned on coming home with a pet, I figured if she needed to be fostered, why not me?
MINE airs Tuesday, February 16th on PBS at 10 p.m.
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