IRMA & PETS: TALES OF TRAGEDY, TRIUMPH
Owners’ tales of loss and survival as the hurricane blew across Palm Beach County.
When Hurricane Irma appeared on South Florida radar screens, millions of people had decisions to make. Should I stay? Should I go? And about three in every five of those people also had to wonder, what am I going to do with F ido?OrS p ot.OrH enry.
You know, The Pet.
This is no small question, because, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association, more than half of pet owners consider their pets part of the family.
Only a fraction – just over 300 - of Palm Beach County’s pets wound up in designated shelters for animals and their owners. An even smaller number were abandoned. The rest were with their designated humans.
Likely many have a story about that other-than-human member of the family in the hours of Irma’s battering, when the roads were closed and t hepowerwas in question. These are just three.
One ending. One near miss. And one beginning – sort of.
A stormy ending: When dad cries
Mark Buzek’s 12-year-old cocker spaniel had been struggling with a collapsed trachea for a year and now KoKo’s health was faltering even more. Buzek’s wife and daughter had flown to Atlanta. His son was sleeping in their Boynton Beach home and the winds of Irma had already begun. Driving wasn’t an option. And what vet could take them anyway?
He could tell the dog in his arms was struggling to breathe, but Buzek was helpless.
In one gasp, the dog’s eyes bulged for air and in a bit of final desperation Buzek set her down to Google if there was a humane way to euthanize a pet at home. Before the computer could reply, the dog went limp and in that moment, Buzek was relieved - and crushed and exasper atedatthe thought she may have suffered.
Buzek, a Palm Beach Post digital specialist, was alone – well, his 20-something son Adam was in the house, but Buzek didn’t call out to him. It had been just the two of them the last time a treasure d famil y pet ha dd ied. The kid was 12 then. It was the first time he ’d seen da d cry . And here theywerea gain.
Eventually, Adam had to be told. Irma neared. Who knew how long they’ d be w ithout power? Buzek couldn’t let the dog’s corpse just sit inside a sweltering house. And so, in a barrage of
wind and rain, father and son headed out to the backyard to bury their beloved pet. Once again, Adam watched as his father cried.
A near miss: When a deputy saves the day
Raji the yellow Labrador retriever’s backseat ride to the emergency vet hospital was stopped short by Sheriff ’s deputies who told his owner that she’d be putting her own life – or at least her freedom – at risk if she attempted the 6-mile drive in that Sunday’s howling winds and rain.
A curfew had been posted for the entire county. Violators were to be arrested.
Jackie Sciorsci turned back to her suburban Lake Worth home but she didn’t want to give up.
“He’s our family dog. We got him when my son was in an accident. He’s named after a Green Bay Packer – my son is a big Green Bay fan,” Sciorsci explained. She was certain the dog wouldn’t survive without immediate intervention.
What had begun as Raji’s upset tummy days earlier had progressed for the worse: He was now vomiting non-stop, his breathing was labored. Her sister Googled the symptoms. Her digital diagnosis: blocked digestive tract. (Her suspicions later proved accurate, Raji had tried to eat one of those orange nuts that fall from palm trees). But in the moment, she was simply desperate to find help and online she had found an animal hospital open in the storm mere minutes away.
The sisters failed to even make it out of the neighborhood before they literally met a road block.
Raji’s vet, Dr. John Pacy, credits what happened next to divine intervention.
The traveling vet had been grounded by Hurricane Irma and to make matters worse his phone had been out all morning. No calls. No texts. No service. And then the silenced phone lit up with a message from Raji’s owner Jackie Sciorsci.
A few brief texts and several minutes later, a Sheriff ’s cruiser was in front of her house.
Dr. Pacy, it turns out, knows a guy – 23 years ago they were roommates. And the guy is a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputy who was eager to help.
In a lull between tornado warnings and with permission from his boss, Dep. Bill Shortly put himself on “special detail” out of his zone in Mangonia Park and escorted Sciorsci, her sister and the dog to the Palm Beach Veterinary Specialists emergency room on Forest Hill Boulevard.
“It felt like an eternity I was driving. All the lights were out,” recalled Sciorsci, who has lived in the county since eighth grade and whose family and its pets have weathered Francis, Jeanne and Wilma without incident.
The veterinary hospital was built to withstand storms. It has generators to keep operating rooms, MRIs and even a cafeteria going. Dep. Shortly carried Raji into the hospital and then wrote a roadside hall pass so that Sciorsci could return home during the storm as well.
The patient delivered, doctors were free to do their work.
“It was a gift from God that I actually had service, because the whole time before and after I didn’t. For this little half hour window, I could text him the situation, he texted he could help out, I texted him her address,” Pacy said. “The dog probably wouldn’t have survived if she hadn’t taken it in.”
The sort-of beginning: How Facebook kept owners, pets connected
Traci and Jeff Garfinkel would tell you their only child to date is Teddy, a 10-year-old rescued Cairn terrier with a fierce fear of storms. But Traci is pregnant. It is a high-risk pregnancy, she says, and with Irma bearing down on the state, Traci’s doctor wanted the Boynton Beach couple to move into the hospital.
“I wanted to bring Teddy. I tried. I really did. I asked them if my dog could stay with us,” Traci said. The response was a definitive no.
So while the Garfinkels were camped out on air mattresses at West Boca Medical Center, Teddy checked into INN the Dog House, where he typically does doggy daycare.
Bunked there, Teddy possibly had a better time than his humans.
He and his furry peers played to music, ran in circles, chased tails and barked. He had his stuffed elephant. Meanwhile, the three humans sheltering with them kept things from, well, going to the dogs – 65 of them, not to mention the 15 cats, a pig named Wilbur and a sequestered pet bird.
The Garfinkels know Teddy was a happy camper because they checked in on him electronically.
INN the Doghouse, situated in a strip shopping mall near Congress Avenue and Gateway, has its own Facebook page and humans who are eager to answer texts and emails and post all sorts of photos and videos to assure their distant owners.
“I was messaging. Two or three times a day, I would be checking on him. He hates storms. He was abused before I got him,” Traci said.
The storefront was covered in plywood declaring “We are open,” while inside the crew was holed up with at least 700 gallons of water and enough dog treats to shame a Petsmart.
Most of the dogs, like Teddy, were regulars to the Inn’s doggy daycare, but 30 percent were bunkered inside strictly because their humans were worried about Irma outside. Some of those humans needed to work. Some needed to evacuate their homes.
The business did have an emergency evacuation plan involving a Boynton Beach police officer who was boarding his own dog there during the storm, owner Kerry Miller said.
But the inn never lost power, and better than that, its Facebook page never went down. And that’s how dozens of owners kept up with their animals from Saturday to Monday.
It was also how Lisa Shaine knew to take Oreo the papillon there when the elderly dog started showing signs of overheating days after Irma passed.
Shaine’s home lost power on Sunday and by Tuesday it had not returned.
“It was almost 90 degrees in my house. He had gotten to the point where he stopped panting. When a dog stops panting, that’s a danger sign,” Shaine said. The dog’s vet was manning the office, but the office didn’t have air conditioning. Oreo’s regular dog sitters did. “I knew they were open. They had been posting online.”
They ushered Oreo into the air conditioning upon arrival. By day’s end Shaine’s power was restored.
“I’m convinced that taking him there saved his life.”