Total frustration organizing photos

I am a new Mac owner and have to say that, so far, I think iPhoto is the WORST PROGRAM EVER!!! 
I have almost 5,000 photos that I transferred over from my PC.  They were all neatly arranged in folders that I set up up according to *MY* preferences.....but iPhoto took them all and rearranged them by date. Basically, it has done the digital equivalent of opening my folders and throwing my pictures all over the room.  I can't find anything.  Worse yet, I can't seem to recreate my folders....iPhone keeps throwing extra pictures in!!!  Example: Say I create a folder called DOGS and want to put....well, pictures of dogs in it.  click on a bunch of dog photos to highlight them, then drag them to the folder.  But when I open the folder, there are not only my dog pictures but other unrelated pictures that I did *NOT* drag to the album!! 
This is making me nuts....I can't use my pictures the way I would like.  If anyone could offer instruction on how to make the folders *I* want.....or, another photo app I could use, I'd appreciate it....

You might take a moment to learn how to use the application, then you'll find that you have less problems.
Some terminology:
What you see in the iPhoto Window are Events. These are date based, by definition. Events are automatic organisation for people who can't be bothered. You can ignore them if you want to and use Albums instead.
Albums are much more flexible. Photos can be in any number of Albums with no duplication. Want a photo in two Events? Then you'll need to duplicate it, and so use twice the disk space.
Folders do not contain photos. They can contain Albums and other folders of Albums. But you can't put a shot in a folder.
1. Iphoto didn't re-organise the the folders you brought over from your PC. It didn't touch them at all. They are still as you left them.
When you imported into iPhoto it simply organised them by date by default. They can be organised, viewed and sorted other ways. Explore the options in the View Menu -> Sort Events.
2. So, to use your organisation from your PC. Get rid of this Library, make a new one and start over.
If you want to duplicate your Folder Tree in iPhoto:
Start at the bottom of the hierarchy and drag a folder of images to the Album Heading in iPhoto. The pics will be imported and an Album of the same name created.
You can then create the Enclosing Folders in the iPhoto Window (File -> New Folder) and drag the Album to it. Folders can contain other Folders (Nested Folders) and Albums.
3. If you want to make a new blank Album try shift-command-n
4. If you're organising things thematically - for instance, you want to create an Album of dogs, then Keywords and Smart Albums are a better way to go.
Keyword all your dog pics - use Dog as a keyword, for instance
Then File -> New -> Smart Album
Keyword-> is -> Dog
Will find all the photos you keywords with that tag. As you add keywords to photos they will be added to the Smart Album automatically
And, a photo can have many keywords. So if you have a photo of your dog and you cat together, then add 'Cat' to it as well. A smart album based on 'Cat' will find that photo too, and it will be in both albums.
Regards
TD

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    a fairly large photo library that I keep on NAS, and definitely want to keep it there.
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    My photos are currently folder-organized, mostly by date, but the level above date is by major categories (such as child's name, etc). I realize the date organization becomes redundant if I migrated to iPhoto, and even the categories seem redundant too if I can tag them all instead, etc.
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    we have an iMac & a MBP, and would love to be able to share the NAS library on our respective iPhotos, and be able to keep "sync'd" up to what the other has done.
    Again, noting that the NAS is not the way to go here, you can simply enable iPhoto Sharing or use the same Library with both machines - very easy.
    I know that these a pretty short answers, and by all means post back if we can be more helpful.
    Regards
    TD

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