When I was at the Best Friends hurricane relief center in Tylertown, Mississippi, last December, there were two timid little female dogs in the clinic who received their regular walks from a couple from Virginia. The dogs were inseparable and were dubbed "Yin" and "Yang."

Eventually, this couple took Yin and Yang (now, "Thelma" and "Louise") back to Virginia to foster and, finally, adopt. The volunteers who knew Thelma and Louise later received this email:

I received a call from Whitney at Best Friends in Kanab. She wanted to check on the dogs we are fostering for BF [Best Friends]. We have adopted them now.

Whitney had been volunteering in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Her group kept hearing about puppies at the oil refinery in Plaqmines Parish. After getting permission to go into the area, they then received permission to go into the refinery by the workmen there. A rooftop from some nearby building was on the ground. Underneath that roof, the group found Thelma and Louise with 14 puppies.

According to the workmen, Louise (our little yellow lab mix) is Thelma's (our black dobie mix) mother. The workmen have a dobie mix male on the premises who is Thelma's dad. I don't know who the puppies' dad is. Thelma and Louise were strays and hung out at the refinery and the people there would feed them.  I think that is about all they did because they were so fearful of people.

The group received permission to take the girls and their puppies. The puppies went out to various shelters and Thelma and Louise went to BF in Tylertown.

The group tried to convince the oil refinery men to let them take the male dog but they refused.  They then tried to convince them to have him neutered.  And they refused. :(

It now makes sense that they were so close to each other...mom was protecting her daughter.

They have fit into our pack so well and are great girls.  I am so glad they are officially ours now.

A volunteer who was at Tylertown has initiated a project to make a quilt to auction off to raise money for St. Francis's shelter, where Best Friends set up shop after the hurricane. Volunteers are being asked to contribute quilt squares, which will be sewn together by the project's organizer. Here is my tribute to brave little Thelma and Louise. (The details don't show up very well in the photo, but you get the idea.)

I want to make a quilt square about Annie, or my favorite dogs from my first visit, but I started with this design because it was such an obvious (and quick) one.