Animal Refuge Strives to Corral Pets -- and Despair

First came the flood, then the animals -- and not two by two.

There are 200 dogs here. There are 50 cats. A potbellied pig sleeps in the hay. Parrots and cockatoos flutter in cages. An iguana stands as still as a statue in a terrarium. There are goats, snakes, rabbits, guinea pigs, a pet rat and even a flying squirrel.

There are horses and mules too. Chestnut miniatures and massive Belgian draft horses. Arabian racers and white stallions that used to pull newlyweds through the French Quarter. Altogether, there are more than 220 equines here.

The stables of the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center and 4-H Center in Gonzales have been transformed into a menagerie of refugees -- home to many of the animals that were lost or abandoned during the flood. Animal-care organizations from around the country have poured into Louisiana to assist in the rescue and care of pets and horses.

“We’re trying to get a way to get more of them,” said Kathryn Destreza, the director of New Orleans’ Animal Services Department. “These people have lost everything, so if we can at least give them their dog or their horse, it won’t be so bad.”

Pets have become a hindrance for rescuers, as many survivors of the flood are refusing to leave deluged homes because they want to care for their animals. Many rescuers have stopped residents from coming aboard boats with their pets, and most evacuation shelters do not have facilities for animals.

Destreza said that animal rescue efforts could help persuade people to leave their homes.

“It blows my mind that FEMA and the Red Cross don’t think about that,” she said.

The expo center is next to an evacuation center between New Orleans and Baton Rouge housing about 2,000 people. Many of the animals were brought by evacuees. Others were recovered by volunteers or even soldiers and police officers, who aren’t supposed to recover animals but have been bending the rules.

Before the storm, state veterinarians and Humane Society officials plotted out the locations of veterinarian clinics, stables and other locations where animals could be trapped.

Bonnie Clark, who publishes an equine newsletter, said she set up a horse evacuation database after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 that was helping to guide rescue efforts. Horses and mules in Louisiana are required to have tattoos, brands or a microchip inserted in their neck to identify their owners. Clark said she had information on as many as 3,000 horses. The database eventually will help them find the animals’ owners.

Renee Poirrier of the Louisiana state veterinarian office said that the animals would be photographed and the images posted online at www.vetmed.lsu.edu.

Jeremy Hubert, an equine veterinarian with Louisiana State University, has been driving a big multi-horse trailer around the drier parts of the St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes looking for abandoned horses. In a single day, he found more than 60.

Many of the horses around New Orleans serve the tourist population and the many carriage tours and wedding services in the French Quarter.

“We found seven horses that had been standing in water for four or five days,” he said. “It’s amazing how resilient these creatures are.”

In Westbank, Hubert said, he found a woman holed up in an enormous neo-Georgian mansion with 40 dogs from around the neighborhood. Hubert, who had been picking up only horses, at first declined to take on the dogs.

“But she was frantic,” Hubert said. “She didn’t know how to get them out.”

Hubert relented and herded them all in the trailer with the horses.

The animal refuge is busy even in the middle of the night. Volunteers spray down the dogs and brush the horses. Veterinarians check on the animals regularly, stroking the horses’ noses and calling out to sleeping dogs to make sure they’re alive.

Most of the animals didn’t sleep much, though. Horses whinnied and dogs yipped throughout the night. The volunteers walk the dogs across the lawn at dawn, holding leashes in one hand and scoopers in the other.

Nearby evacuees from the New Orleans area also hear the animals day and night, but some of them don’t seem to mind.

“I’m an animal lover,” said Judy Terese, 62, of Metairie. She checked in at the animal shelter at 10:30 one night last week. “They rescued my greyhound. I just wanted to help out.”

She brought her friend’s daughter, Theresa Thompson, 15, also of Metairie, along with her.

“It gets kind of boring sitting over there in an RV all day,” Thompson said.