Joel Hunter is the kind of guy who heads out on a 50-mile bike ride and comes home with a stray dog he found along the way nestled under his jersey.
The Lakeland resident retired early from his job as a gerontologist with a nonprofit after his bosses told him to stop picking up abandoned dogs he saw while driving on company business.
As he watched coverage of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Hunter thought of the animals displaced by the flooding and separated from their human companions. After applying and gaining approval from the American Humane Society, Hunter — then in his mid-50s — jumped in his Honda CRV and drove to the New Orleans area, arriving about 10 days after Katrina struck…