Katrina pet rescues led to tiffs

MICHAEL KUNZELMAN Comments 0
Published: June 11, 2009

NEW ORLEANS — Jessie Pullins is certain J.J. recognized him when the door to his dog cage swung open, reuniting them for the first time since Hurricane Katrina struck nearly four years ago.

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A film crew was rolling when the head of a California humane society stepped off a plane and delivered J.J. to Pullins, who reluctantly left the dog behind when the storm chased his family out of New Orleans in August 2005.

"When he came out of the cage, he came straight to me,” Pullins recalled May 3, two days after their reunion at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.

"J.J. is a part of me ... that was missing for a long time,” he said.

Pullins, 52, knew for more than two years that his dog was rescued from his home, flown to California and adopted by two sisters, but it took a court battle to reunite them. Pullins’ quest to regain 5-year-old J.J., a male Labrador-shepherd mix, is portrayed in "Mine,” a documentary that won an audience award at this year’s South by Southwest film festival and is scheduled to be broadcast on PBS next year.

The film tells stories of animal lovers who streamed into New Orleans to rescue thousands of stranded pets after the hurricane. It also shows both sides of the ownership disputes that later cropped up between Gulf Coast residents and some of the people who adopted pets.

In Pullins’ case, the humane society official who oversaw J.J.’s adoption said she’s happy about the reunion but said it involved a sad ending for the adoptive owners.

"This was just a situation that had no perfect ending. Somebody had to get hurt with it,” Cheri Lucas said.

Geralyn Pezanoski, the film’s San Francisco-based director and co-producer, said she encountered about a dozen owners whose pets had been adopted by others and included several of those stories in the film. She also interviewed people who adopted Katrina victims’ pets.

"I wanted people to see what I saw: It wasn’t a really simple situation,” she said.

J.J. and 28 other dogs wound up at the Second Chance at Love Humane Society in Templeton, Calif. Lucas, the society’s founder, said she returned three of the dogs to their owners and waited several months before finding new homes for J.J. and others.

After more than a year of legal wrangling, the sisters who adopted J.J. agreed to send him to New Orleans to be reunited with Pullins.

Pullins says he doesn’t harbor any grudges.

"I need people to understand: There are no good guys or bad guys. It’s only about me and J.J.,” he said.