By Darrell Halen
Staff Writer

Observer/Bruce Preston Brenda Perreault of Westford, Mass., holds one of the dogs from New Orleans that was transported from a sanctuary in Mississippi to the Pelham Animal Shelter last week. Four volunteers with Animal Rescue Network of New England delivered the dogs to Pelham where rescue organizations and people provided them with foster homes.

Observer/Bruce Preston Andrea Mondi of Lowell, Mass., is one of the volunteers who helped with the transfer of animals to the Pelham Animal Shelter.

Leslie Sampson drove an hour and a half from her home in Croydon, a town in the Lake Sunapee region, to Pelham so she could bring a stray dog back to her home.

Sampson was one of the dog-lovers who offered to provide a foster home when she learned that a group of abandoned canines from New Orleans, battered by Hurricane Katrina, were being transported to Pelham.

“I wanted to do something to help the animals,” Sampson said. “I’ve always had a soft spot for Rottweilers or any dog.”

Four volunteers from Animal Rescue Network of New England, an organization that unites shelters and rescue organizations to save animals, arrived with two vans full of dogs at the Pelham Animal Shelter during the evening of Sept. 23.

Prior to their arrival, animal rescue organizations and people – like Sampson – had been lined up to provide foster care to the dogs. The animals’ owners have until Dec. 4 to claim them.

The ARNNE volunteers transported the dogs from an animal shelter in Tylertown, Miss. The dogs had been rescued in New Orleans by the Best Friends Animal Society. “They had a team of getdown- on-the-dirt people that were out in New Orleans who were crawling in the mud, breaking windows, climbing through roofs,” said Dale Green, an ARNNE member from Antrim, who joined the other three volunteers on the trip.

Green said the dogs were well cared for at the sanctuary, where they got shots and identification microchips.

The ARNNE volunteers left with the animals around 2:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 22.

Green said the dogs were happy to be in air conditioning and in a stress-free environment.

The next day, two dogs were dropped off with a rescue group in Connecticut, and the remaining 21 dogs arrived at the Pelham shelter around 9:45 p.m.

The dogs got a break from their crates about every six or seven hours during the trip.

Most stayed over in the Pelham shelter overnight and were going to be checked by a veterinarian the next day, Green said.

“They need to be loved and walked,” said ARNNE member Melanie Holden of Pelham. “They’ve been in crates for days.”

“We’re going to give them as much love as we can,” said another ARNNE member from Pelham, Leslie McNulty, while walking a black Labrador.

Pelham Animal Control Officer Tim Vincent said that Police Chief Evan Haglund allowed the Pelham shelter, the town’s dog pound, to be used.

“Pelham has been great to us,” Green said. “We are really grateful. These dogs don’t know how lucky they are.”