Dog Back in Big Easy After a Long Recovery

A blond Lab-chow mix is back home in New Orleans after seven months of rest and recuperation in Santa Clara.

Blondie had been locked inside a bathroom for five weeks after her owner fled the rising floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.

The dog weighed just 17 pounds when rescued.

“She was incredibly emaciated and dehydrated, she had a couple of IVs attached to her, and six or seven people were working on her at that point,” said Laura Bergerol of Palo Alto, who flew to the hurricane-ravaged area in September to help rescue animals.

“She was the skinniest, so young and small.”

Blondie weighed 52 pounds when Bergerol flew her back home last weekend.

She was one of seven canine Katrina victims that Bergerol arranged to have flown to San Jose in October.

When Katrina hit, Blondie’s owner, Debra Williams, was told that she probably could return home in two or three days, so she left the dog locked in a bathroom with a 20-pound bag of food and the sink and bathtub filled with water.

But Williams’ home was destroyed, and she lived briefly in Detroit and Chicago before making it back to New Orleans this spring.

“They’re doing fine,” Bergerol said. “Blondie is the epitome of what happened and was proof of the spirit of some of these animals.”