By Carrie Allan 

HATTIESBURG, Mississippi—Last Wednesday, as Tropical Depression 18 hemmed and hawed about whether or not to become a hurricane, Allan Schwartz went dancing. His partner was one Miss Asstor, and Schwartz spent a blistering hot Mississippi afternoon whispering sweet nothings in her ear.

Schwartz is a big guy. In his cowboy boots and faded jeans, his bandanna and tats and full grizzled beard, he looks like Santa Claus would if he left the North Pole to join a biker gang. And had Schwartz been dancing with a woman, he'd probably have taken the lead. But the horse lover was dancing with Miss Asstor, a Sicilian donkey who outweighs him by a good 200 pounds, and Schwartz knew it made sense to follow her around the dance floor.

By the Numbers:

· Number of rescued horses at the Hattiesburg, Mississippi, facility: 16.  · Number of rescued horses at the Gonzales, Louisiana, facility: 110, not including two mules.

The dance floor was actually a small back lot in Pass Christian, Mississippi, full of debris—lumber, downed trees, power lines, the contents of the shacks that stood here. Three weeks ago, the lot was underwater, and Miss Asstor was floating, probably for hours. When the storm surge receded, she was left in the remains of her former home, in a tiny lot crammed with rubble, in a town full of dead people. No one could get to her for days.

Wheeling nervously around Schwartz, the soft gray donkey bore the signs of her arduous underwater experience: Her legs and fetlocks were cut up from objects she banged into as she kicked and tried to swim and stay afloat. Flies were buzzing at the seeping wounds, undeterred by the donkey's flicking tail.

In spite of her injuries, she was still a strong animal, and Schwartz moved with her rather than trying to lead, warning the other members of his rescue team to stay away from her back legs. She obviously had a lot of kick left in them, and she was spooked—not just by her experiences of the past weeks, but by the fact that in front of the property, National Guardsmen in a sand-colored Humvee had strung a long metal cable from the vehicle to a downed tree in the lot's driveway. They were trying to clear the way for Schwartz and Miss Asstor.

"Careful, guys," Schwartz warned the gathered group. "There's going to be a noise, and she's not going to like it."

He was right: Down the driveway, the Humvee gunned for power, and the tree came down and out with a loud crack. With a hard kick of her hooves, Miss Asstor leaped away from the noise and kicked over the bucket of water the team had proffered earlier. But Schwartz held onto her bridle and went with her, calming her down as the noise ceased.

Help From the Blue Devils

Schwartz was in Mississippi with a team of responders, including members of the 88th U.S. Army Reserve's Blue Devil Horse Platoon. Sergeant 1st class Amy Keele and Corporal Mike Yanz had been on the ground since right after Katrina hit. Schwartz himself, one of the founders of Days End Farm Horse Rescue in Lisbon, Maryland, was in Florida when the storm hit, helping their daughter move into her new house. He got the call from The HSUS, and drove his small trailer all the way home to Maryland to get his larger trailer. He was back on the road again four hours later, headed to Mississippi. He's been here since, working with other volunteers to pull horses and other equines impacted by the storm out of dangerous situations.

In this area of the devastated coast, many horses drowned in the huge storm surge that swept miles inland as Katrina made landfall. But even the ones who made it through aren't necessarily safe: Some have been injured; many are underweight and dehydrated—a situation that's only getting worse as the salt-soaked grass and foliage dies. Schwartz and the rest of the team have been moving animals up to Hattiesburg daily, where each gets her own stall and care from the Veterinary Medical Assistance Team and volunteer equine specialists brought in by The HSUS.

With the tree out of the way, Schwartz was able to coax Miss Asstor along the cluttered driveway to the trailer. He told one of the Blue Devils to put dirty hay on the back of the trailer. "It'll smell like horse," he said. "Make her more comfortable."

Miss Asstor was persuaded. She got onto the trailer.

Out on the road, Amy Keele thanked the men from the National Guard for their help with the tree. “Now you have a good ass story,” she told one of the guardsmen, who laughed appreciatively and agreed that good ass stories are a nice thing to go home with.

Within minutes, the convoy was on its way to deliver the frightened donkey to her temporary home, a pasture further inland belonging to a friend of the donkey's owner, where she would get housing and vet care.

"No More Than a Point-Five"

In Mississippi, most of the horses who've been rescued since the storm have been pulled out at owner request. Many people here have lost their homes or have been unable to return, and so their surviving horses have been trapped on property with all sorts of hazards on it, from sewage and chemical contamination to live power lines to broken fencing to the debris that had cut up Miss Asstor's legs.

After delivering the donkey, the team headed to the next rescue in Gulfport, where an owner of two horses had requested that the animals be taken from a large lot and transported to the Hattiesburg site for care and housing. The convoy drove out through unmarked roads, past crushed white picket fences and mangled gas stations and over bayous that reeked of upturned algae and rot. By the side of the road near a Red Cross food distribution center, an enterprising sort was already selling "I Survived Hurricane Katrina" t-shirts. A huge piece of plywood in front of a smashed-up store had been spray painted with the message "LOOTERS WILL BE SHOT." Not the friendliest welcome, but at least the writer had added pupils to the Os in "LOOTERS," giving the word a cheerful set of cartoon eyeballs.

When Schwartz and the team arrived at the lot, it was fenced off and locked, and even when a neighbor came to unlock the fence, the property was such a tangle of bracken and bushes and fallen trees that the team couldn't even tell where the horses were. They worked their way across the property, moving between ramshackle buildings and stepping carefully through high brush. Mosquitoes found them immediately, and huge welts started to appear on exposed flesh.

They finally found the horses behind a low-lying, beat-up barn, and the first responder to see them let out a gasp. The others pressed past the gate and into the tiny lot, where greenish rainwater had collected in two old bathtubs and where two horses huddled close to each other, eyeing the group nervously.

One, a chestnut gelding, was in good flesh and seemed energetic. The other was another story entirely.

Horse folks rank the weight of horses on what's known as the Henneke scale. A ten is morbidly obese; a one is emaciated. Ruth Henthorn, part of the Blue Devils squad, grimly estimated that this old palomino mare was no more than a point-five.

Reading Their Signs

The palomino moved slowly. It seemed a miracle she was still alive. Every rib was visible and her hipbones jutted out horribly. While most of the group agreed that there was probably a neglect issue, they also pointed out that the old girl was over 35, and may have been ill. Cancer or Cushing's disease could have caused this kind of emaciation, perhaps.

Henthorn, who's partial to mares, wasn't convinced. Her anger at the mare's condition was as palpable as her concern for the animal. She leaned against one of the bathtubs and talked softly to the horse, and soon the animal was lapping at her hand for the salt that had gathered in its creases.

Schwartz had been told that these animals had never been handled; the gelding was supposedly born right there in the lot. Getting them onto the trailer was not going to be easy. Even worse, it could be dangerous. Miss Asstor was a small donkey; this big gelding outweighed her by hundreds of pounds, and he was a lot feistier.

At first, the group watched the animals' behavior: While in terrible condition, the mare at least seemed friendly. Her partner, on the other hand, was not pleased by the intrusion. He stamped around the tiny lot, making lunges at team members, then dashing past them. Whenever a responder got close to the mare, he reacted by snorting and trotting closer. He was very protective of the other horse, and as the team observed the bone structure of the two animals' faces, they began to believe that the younger horse was probably the mare's son.

Watching the horses' behavior, Schwartz formed his plan: He instructed Henthorn, who seemed to have gained the mare's trust, to lead her onto the trailer.

"Once she's on, I think he'll follow her," he said to the gathered team. "Just guide her in and let her do the work on the other. We could form a rope barrier, but I kind of think anything we do might excite her, so let's try this first."

Henthorn did as she was asked, talking gently to the mare as she lead her out of the lot toward the trailer.

The gelding started to follow, and it seemed like the plan was working—but as the mare stepped onto the trailer, the sound of her hooves hitting the metal spooked the younger horse, and he plunged back across the lawn, nearly trampling a few team members in his way.

Back in the smaller lot, he wheeled around and trotted in circles, snorting and nickering, obviously displeased that the other horse wasn't there anymore. Keele and one of the other Blue Devils headed back into the lot, and with some strategic herding and whistling from the trailer, they got the gelding moving again. This time, he came straight onto the trailer, right at Henthorn and the mare. Once on the trailer, where his own hooves on the metal made a loud and unfamiliar clanging, he started kicking violently, and Henthorn had to leap out the side door of the trailer to get away. The other responders slammed the back door shut and locked it.

"She protected me," Henthorn said, slightly out of breath. "The mare got between me and the gelding when he started kicking."

Once the trailer was shut, the younger horse settled down. Schwartz was pleased with the results.

"I love it when a plan comes together," he said with a grin.

The Lucky Ones

Back in Hattiesburg, Schwartz said that the horses down here have some hard times ahead. He expects many of the animals will be coming in dehydrated and far too skinny—much of the pastureland near the coast has been destroyed. Some of the animals may suffer skin conditions and neurological damage due to salt and other contaminants in the water they've been standing in or drinking.

John Roberson and Tamara Aldridge, two volunteers from Manatee County, Florida, who've been helping take care of equines in the Hattiesburg shelter, said many of the horses in the stables are suffering from depression, standing silently with their heads down all day. They're trying to make sure that the animals regularly get time out of their stalls, but said that the animals would soon start showing their trauma in their hooves.

"A good farrier can look at the hooves, and tell you that six months ago, something stressful happened to this horse," said Aldridge, noting that the marks in the hooves are like rings in a tree.

But the horses who have come into Hattiesburg are, by and large, lucky animals indeed, said John Thompson, a volunteer from Vero Beach who's been helping in the stables here. Most of the animals are getting the best veterinary care they've ever had.

"I'm really proud of what we're doing here and the care these horses are getting," he said. "You can see the effects already of better food and grooming. The horses we've brought in, the ones who've been here for a week, their coats are already better. They're starting to glisten."

Carrie Allan is the associate editor of Animal Sheltering Magazine at The HSUS.