Catira Alejandra couldn’t contain her excitement when she was reunited with her family. Tail wagging, frenzied leaping, and loving licks to the face marked the moment the small dog finally saw the familiar faces she didn’t know if she would see again.
But several days earlier, Catira was hunched over, head down and trembling as gloved hands examined her after she was rescued in La Guaira. She was briefly renamed by her rescuers and carried no information to trace back to the life she once knew. She was one of the hundreds of pets that flooded shelters after twin earthquakes devastated parts of Venezuela in June, killing thousands of people.
Since then, scores of…