Even King Solomon might have been stumped.

True, he could divine the real mother of a baby claimed by two women, but in "Mine," the disputed innocents are dogs. Cherished by their original families, beloved by their new ones and at the center of crazy custody disputes.

"Mine," opening Friday at the Regent Square Theater, is a documentary about New Orleans residents who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina, only to learn their precious pooches might be gone, too.

Take the compelling case of Malvin Cavalier, a retired sheet-metal worker born in January 1920 and widowed in 2003. Cavalier turns wistful as he points out Bandit's empty leash and recounts how the pair would take regular walks and then sit in the shade.

"Aaw, I love Bandit," and you sense that when he told the shaggy poodle, "We gonna be back in a couple of days. Just try to hold out," the dog (almost) understood, and Cavalier certainly believed it.

When he realized the levees broke, he wondered, "What about Bandit?" And when he heard Bandit had been rescued and was living in Pittsburgh -- "Pittsboig" as he pronounces it -- he was puzzled, for starters.

"Pittsburgh, Pa. Good night. What is Bandit doing way over there?" he asked, and why won't the caretaker return his dog.

"Mine," directed by Geralyn Pezanoski who fostered and adopted a Katrina dog who is a pointer mix, uses the issues of rescuing and reuniting pets and owners to explore a range of issues.

Chief among them: The notion (false in many cases) that owners simply left their pets to die; the devotion of animal lovers who flocked to New Orleans to save strangers' pets; judgments made about the condition of animals based on heartworms or facial scars; the inability of some owners to find out what happened to their pets or to force new guardians to return them; and just who can play the modern-day role of Solomon.

Toss in the incendiary questions of race, class, physical distance and the chaos of post-Katrina New Orleans and it's one hot mess. It's also undeniably watchable as it shows people at their best, worst and most lovably illogical.

One Florida woman acknowledges, "Maybe I'm doing the wrong thing," by refusing to return a dog. "I've just had so many bad things happen to me in the past few years that I just didn't think this would be another thing that I would have to go through. I don't want to give him up."

In other words, he's mine. Funny, that's just what the dog's original owner says.

Most stories end happily and Bandit (whose tale was chronicled by Dennis Roddy in the Post-Gazette in 2006 before it came to a conclusion) proves a pooch worth fighting for.

In a world where earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis and snowstorms claim lives, people will always trump pets but that doesn't mean dogs like Bandit, J.J., Max and Murphy Brown are any less important to their families and don't deserve their own tearful, tail-wagging reunions.

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