When the two cubs arrived at a makeshift shelter in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, their thin legs were bent from exhaustion. They had been treading water for hours when floodwaters turned the streets into rivers.
“At times like this your heart sinks,” said Daniel Guimarães Gerardi, a volunteer veterinarian at the shelter. Two days after being rescued, the six-month-old strays were mostly dozing, still exhausted from their ordeal.
More than a month after catastrophic floods began to hit southern Brazil, the region is still reeling. The floods submerged entire towns, closed an international airport and displaced almost 600,000 people throughout the State of Rio Grande do Sul. At least 169 people died and 56 are missing. Thousands of animals were separated from their owners.
Dramatic scenes of dogs climbing onto the roofs of flooded houses and firefighters rescuing stranded animals, including a horse named Caramel, made headlines around the world. (Caramel was finally reunited with his owner.)
Tens of thousands of people remain in shelters, unable to return to their homes. According to state authorities, more than 12,500 domestic animals have been rescued. Many are ownerless, said Fabiana de Araújo Ribeiro, director of Porto Alegre’s animal welfare office. Even when they do, “they have nowhere to go” because their homes have been ruined, she said.
And as water levels cover street names and house numbers, rescuers have had difficulty recording precisely where pets were rescued. It is more common in the United States than in many parts of Latin America for owners to implant tracking chips in their pets, making it easier to reunite them, animal welfare advocates said.
And stray animals are more common in Latin America, where they are often cared for by an entire block, said Joaquín de la Torre Ponce, Latin America director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a nonprofit organization. “These community dogs and cats don’t have a specific owner,” he said. “So no one will come looking for them.”
In an abandoned warehouse in Canoas, a city near Porto Alegre, some 800 rescued dogs were waiting in makeshift kennels. Many had been saved after days or weeks of being stranded on rooftops, trees and flooded houses. Some were injured or sick and most were malnourished. Some, like Gigante, an old farmer, had been left there by owners who could not take them to the shelters that now served as their home.
Sérgio Hoff was searching the winery looking for his missing pets. When he was evacuated from his home in Canoas with his wife and his 9-year-old daughter in early May, the family had to leave behind their five dogs and three cats. “We just couldn’t take them with us,” said Hoff, a 39-year-old banker. “It was chaos.”
The family released the animals, hoping they would climb to higher ground if the water rose. Hoff eventually found two of his dogs at another shelter, giving him hope that the others had also survived. But after weeks of searching, he still hadn’t found the others.
“We’re not going to give up,” Hoff said.
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