01/12/2025
This is Takako, and she has a story to tell about why evacuation shelters are so important for animals. She is 16 years old and properly retired in the mountains of Northern California, but she was born in the Ibaraki Prefecture of Japan. During the March 2011 triple disaster in Japan, over 200,000 people had to evacuate from around the nuclear power plant, and the government would not allow them to bring their pets. Dogs, cats, and livestock animals were left alone in the radiation zone, and many perished. I adopted Takako about 9 months later from a rescue group, and she came back to US with me and my family and our other dog, Liberty. Even now she still has a little of that frightened, half feral, abandoned soul in her. She and all the other animals deserved so much more.
