Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, my wife and I had jobs, a home and two beautiful dogs. Then, Hurricane Katrina came along and took it all away. Our jobs no longer exist, our home has been under at least eight feet of water for nearly three weeks, and our dogs Griffin and Zoe are lost somewhere in the emergency animal shelter system. They were rescued from the uptown veterinary hospital where I worked six days after the storm. They were initially taken to the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales, Louisiana and last weekend we spent five hours travelling from Florida, where we have evacuated, to Baton Rouge and Gonzales just on the off chance that they might still be there. We looked at hundreds of dogs, but could not find Griffin or Zoe.

Because they have Avid microchips, we figured that it would only be a matter of time before they were found, but it seems that none of the rescued animals have even begun to be scanned for chips.

In the meantime, my wife and I have contacted every person we could think of who might be able to help, including the head of a Houston pit bull rescue group and numerous volunteers at Lamar-Dixon.

On Wednesday we noted that the LSU Veterinary School web site listed my vet hospital as having dogs at the AgCenter. But, when we called, they told us that our dogs were not "in their database."

The entire situation has been heartbreaking for both of us. All we want is get our dogs back. We don't care about our house or our jobs. We just want Griffin and Zoe. And, all it should take for us to get them back is for those taking care of them to scan them for microchips. If anyone working at Lamar-Dixon or any of the in-state emergency animal shelters (or anyone who may have seen my dogs) happens to read this, please get in touch with me!

P.S.: Griffin is a neutered red-nose pit bull. He is approximately 80 lbs. Zoe is a spayed, black pit bull. She is approximately 70 lbs. and has a circular scar on her rear.