Saving Weezie

You'll need a tissue for this one:

For five days after Hurricane Katrina, 69-year-old Thomas Reed and his dachshund, Weezie, slept in an attic, living on cans of vienna sausages and bags of Chee Wees cheese snacks as floodwaters surged through their working-class suburb of New Orleans. "We had no electricity, no ice, no water—we just had to make do," says Reed, a retired civil engineer.

Reed's ordeal could have ended earlier, but the rescuers who paddled up to the house on the second day of the flood refused to take his 7-year-old dachshund—and Reed refused to leave without her.

"This little dog is my family," he says. "She's the sweetest, most trusting little thing. No way was I going to leave her behind."

By the time Hurricane Rita rolled around, some officials had learned a little more about human nature and were telling people forced to evacuate by public transport that they could bring their pets.
In the aftermath of Katrina, county hurricane shelters for pets have sprung up all over Florida. Many in county government have come to realize that it's less inconvenient for them to designate a school or two as pet shelters than it is for them to dig out dead citizens who wouldn't leave those pets behind.

Here in Broward you must pre-register your pets for the new shelters. For the people in the flood-prone areas who are ordered to evacuate for almost every storm, this will work out just fine.

(Via Fark.)