Elaine the Dog Lady has Left the Building

My last two days have been spent helping Elaine pack up and fly out. Most everyone on Grand Turk knew Elaine as the Dog Lady. I knew her as a friend.

Elaine was the subject of my third blog. One of the early characters that I met on Grand Turk. My blog read in part:

"I just met Helene. She is French Canadian and runs a makeshift animal shelter on the island. She is about 65, the size of Lucas, and was a concert pianist. The museum works with Helene to provide an animal hospital twice a year. Veterinarians come from Canada and use our conservation laboratory to spade and neuter all of the animals they can."

In fact, she was older. And the French "Helen" is Elaine in English. And she and her vets completed over 300 animal surgeries at the museum since I have been here.

Elaine ran the animal shelter on Grand Turk as part of United Humanitarians, a non-profit organization based in Florida. Since the hurricane it has been very difficult for Elaine here. Her funding kept getting cut and was often late. Though she still had to feed 50 plus animals at the shelter. As people have left the TCI, Elaine's volunteer and support base shrunk to less than a handful of people. In fact, maybe three people. A couple months ago her program was cut all together.

The museum is one of the few really functional NGOs on Grand Turk. As such, I have really tried to support the work of other non-profits. I have tried to help Elaine with almost anything it took to help her through the stress of the emergency she found herself in.

For the last year or more, she has been working on an animal rescue plan to try and get the sheltered animals off of Grand Turk and into the states. Finally, this happened yesterday. We started moving animals at 4:00am. By 7:00am we had 49 dogs and cats assembled at the airport. At 8:00 a chartered rescue plane landed. It took forever to get everything together, but a couple hours later they were off. We put a few additional animals on a plane this morning.

Elaine and her animals are now in a Florida shelter built to take animals after Hurricane Katrina. This never happened. But the shelter now holds 53 animals rescued off of Grand Turk after Hurricane Ike.

I spent all weekend helping Elaine fill out customs forms and creating packing invoices. So much work, is now just a sigh of relief. In a few days, it will just be another friend gone from Grand Turk.

So many...