After the floods, Brazil sees an increase in the number of homeless pets

When the two cubs arrived at a makeshift shelter in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, their thin legs gave out from exhaustion. They had remained afloat for hours, struggling to survive as floods swamped the city, turning streets into rivers.

“We tried to get them to walk, but they couldn't,” said Dr. Daniel Guimarães Gerardi, a volunteer veterinarian at the shelter. “Your heart aches at times like these, for the suffering of these poor animals.”

Two days after being rescued, the 6-month-old mutts — one brindle, the other jet black — mostly snoozed on donated blankets among chew toys, still drained from their ordeal. When awake, they staggered around the shelter on unsteady legs, wagging their tails and with their ears pinned back.

They had no name tags and no one had come looking for them since they were found on May 21. “We hope that if they have health workers, they will be found,” Dr. Guimarães said. If not, she added, the goal will be to find them a good, safe home.

More than a month after the catastrophic floods that hit southern Brazil, the worst disaster in recent history, the region is still struggling. Floods have submerged entire cities, destroyed bridges, closed an international airport and displaced nearly 600,000 people across the state of Rio Grande do Sul. At least 169 people were killed and 56 are still missing.

In the midst of the unrest, thousands of animals were separated from their owners and trapped by floods. Dramatic scenes of dogs struggling to save themselves climbing onto the roofs of flooded houses and firefighters rescuing stranded animals, including a horse called Caramelo, grabbed headlines around the world. (Caramelo was eventually reunited with his owner.)

Even as floodwaters recede, tens of thousands of people remain in temporary shelters, unable to return to their destroyed or damaged homes. And according to state authorities, more than 12,500 pets have been saved since the crisis began.

Many of these animals have no owners, explains Fabiana de Araújo Ribeiro, director of Porto Alegre's animal welfare office.

Even when they do, “they have nowhere to return” because their homes have been ruined, Ms. Ribeiro said.

And with water levels covering street signs and house numbers, rescue teams have struggled to record precisely where pets were rescued or who they might belong to.

Waves of homeless animals are common after natural disasters around the world, as owners are killed, separated from their pets or forced into temporary shelters that do not accept animals.

However, returning displaced animals is more complex in countries like Brazil than in the United States, where best practices often include methodically recording where animals are found and creating centralized hotlines to help owners find animals domestic animals, said Joaquin de la Torre Ponce, director for Latin America at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a Washington-based nonprofit.

It is also more common in the United States than in many parts of Latin America for owners to implant tracking chips in their pets, making reunification easier, animal welfare advocates said.

And strays are more prevalent in Latin America, where animals are often fed and cared for by an entire city block, Ponce said.

“These community cats and dogs do not have a specific owner,” he said. “So no one will come looking for them in a scenario like this.”

Under the leaky roof of an abandoned warehouse in Canoas, a town near Port Alegre, about 800 rescued dogs shuffled, whimpered and barked in makeshift kennels built of wooden pallets.

The space had been transformed into a makeshift shelter by volunteers, who worked in shifts to register, feed, medicate and care for the animals. Few of the animals had names, but each crate bore a number, scribbled on cardboard by shelter workers.

Many had been rescued by rescue teams, after spending days or even weeks stranded on rooftops, in trees and in flooded houses. Some arrived injured or sick, and most were severely malnourished.

Some, like Gigante, an elderly Labrador wearing a pink T-shirt printed with red hearts, had been left behind by owners who were barred from taking their pets to the temporary shelters they now called home.

In one corner, a muscular brown and white mutt pulled on a leash, showing his sharp teeth. He had almost recovered from a gash on his muzzle, volunteers said, but he had been anxious since floods inundated his home and sent his owner to hospital.

Deeper in the warehouse, a submissive Rottweiler lay curled up in the back corner of his kennel, his head resting on his paws. Firefighters had found him swimming in the streets of Canoas two weeks earlier, shaking and agitated.

In recent days, another violent downpour sparked a riot in the shelter. When the downpour began, the dogs tried to climb onto the roofs of their kennels. “They get nervous when they see water,” said Celso Luis Vieira, 74, a volunteer. “They think the place is going to flood.”

On a recent weekend morning, Sérgio Hoff was scouring the warehouse looking for his missing pets. When he fled his home in Canoas with his wife and 9-year-old daughter in early May, the family had to abandon their five dogs and three cats.

“My wife was panicking; she didn't want to leave them,” said Mr. Hoff, 39, a banker. “But we couldn't take them with us. It was chaos.

The family let the animals loose in their yard, hoping they would climb to higher ground if the waters rose. They never imagined that the water would submerge their entire house.

Mr. Hoff eventually found two of his dogs in a shelter on the other side of Canoas, which gave him hope that the others had also survived. But after weeks of searching for other animal shelters and scouring social media pages, he still hadn't found the rest of the pets.

“Frustration is the only word that describes this,” he said after another unsuccessful visit to the shelter. “But we won't give up”

At the Porto Alegre shelter, a 2-year-old black mutt named Ticolé had better luck.

Frightened by the water invading his neighborhood, the dog broke free from the house and ran away, just as his owners were preparing to flee. After two weeks, his owner, Jorge Caldeira Santos, finally tracked him down.

“I found him,” he said, as he led Ticolé out of the shelter.