By Tim Carman

NEW ORLEANS – As volunteers and members of The HSUS's Disaster Animal Response Team walked through a devastated neighborhood on the western edge of the Big Easy, adjacent to one of the city's protective pumping stations and canals, they took in the hell wrought on the area by floodwaters.

And they could only wonder how any animal survived it for a few hours, let alone for the two weeks since the levees broke.

The water here has mostly receded, leaving behind a swampy soup of smells—part decomposing organic material and part industrial chemicals—a combination that has turned the remaining water into a greenish liquid with small pools of oil floating on top. Giant trees are  uprooted, exposing their complicated network of roots. The walls of a few aging bungalows had been knocked out from under their roofs, and now those roofs rest on piles of debris. Cars are covered, tire to roof, in mud and filth; from a distance, the vehicles look like they have been bombed.

And yet: Amid all this destruction there is, surprisingly, life. Like the pit bull terrier mix who held out, surviving in a dull, gray house with a muddy, residual water line running across its clapboards at eye level.

Clinging to Life

Once HSUS Disaster Animal Response Team (DART) member Bruce Earnest busted down the door to this aging house, the rest of the team saw the damage inside. A plastic trash can sat upended at the door, its contents raided for whatever morsels remained. The waterlogged black-cloth couch looked like it had floated for days inside the home, finally coming to rest wherever the receding water set it down. The refrigerator lay on its side in the kitchen, and a lifetime of pictures, trinkets, and personal items lay soaked and scattered throughout the rooms. The smell of mildew and humidity saturated the home.

A dog stranded for days in high floodwaters found shelter in this AC unit cage.

Adrift in this floating living room, the golden-coated pit bull found shelter in the only place the water couldn't reach: a black-metal frame encasing the air conditioning unit in a nearby window. At least that's where the rescue team found the frightened animal. He had somehow clawed his way through the accordion wing on the left side of the AC unit, and squeezed himself between the air conditioner and the metal bars.

Despite his dire predicament, the dog was not about to leave his metal perch—at least not with strangers. Growling, barking and inching further back into his self-imposed jail, the dog fought every attempt by rescuers to grab him with a control pole, but the animal had literally backed himself into a tight spot, and the team was able to quickly collar him and pull him from the inhospitable house.

The dog rescued from the AC unit cage proved reluctant to move into the truck.

Once outside on the street, the dog proved no easier to move into the transport truck. As Laura Anderson, a humane officer with the Louisiana SPCA, steadied the dog with the long metal control pole, Earnest attempted to approach the pooch from behind. He gingerly grabbed the dog's collar with his left hand and tried to place his right arm under the animal's emaciated rib cage. Just when it seemed Earnest would succeed, the dog turned and snapped with lightning-like quickness; Earnest barely removed his hands in time, as the dog chomped at anything within his grasp, including the control pole.

Finally, Drew Moore, a volunteer from Portland, Oregon, grabbed a second control pole and collared the poor pooch. This double-team tactic prevented the animal from biting anyone who approached from behind, allowing Earnest to pick up the animal's hind legs and move him into the truck.

Two police officers from Ohio, who had called the team over to rescue the dog, watched the whole scene unfold with quiet admiration for the rescuers.

The Bigger Picture

This was just one dog, one house, and one story. But it said a lot: Even more than two weeks after Katrina, after the levees were breached, animals are still alive in the Big Easy, surviving on garbage, contaminated water, and the sheer will to live.

The rescue teams see them everywhere—trapped in homes, wandering the streets, hiding under houses, stuck on roofs, anywhere and everywhere life affords them some meager protection or a bite to eat.

And yet, the hold on life for these animals, who rely on the milk of human kindness for their survival, remains tenuous. Teams are already finding animals whose skin looks painted onto a skeleton. One team this week discovered, much to its horror, a dead bulldog in an upstairs bathroom. The owners, apparently thinking they would be gone for days and not weeks, locked the white-coated creature there, with limited food and water. He died beside the bathroom door, obviously hoping for an escape.

The four-person team of rescuers who discovered the bulldog, people who have seen all sorts of horrors inflicted on dogs and cats, were teary-eyed—and angry. They were mostly angry at things out of their control: the limited space to shelter rescued animals, the lack of a coordinated effort from federal authorities to save trapped animals, and their own inability to stretch their limited resources to save pets 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But even as they sorted through their complicated feelings about the bulldog, they realized they had to move on. Other animals needed their help. Like the Jack Russell trapped under a white brick house with blue Christmas lights still strung around the eaves.

New Hope at Every Address

Team members heard the Jack Russell yipping as they walked along Monticello Avenue, near the canal that drains into Lake Ponchatrain. They chased the dog, white with a dashing brown patch over his left eye, under the brick house, where he refused to budge for minute after agonizing minute under the broiling Louisiana sun.

The rescuers mapped out their strategy on the fly. Earnest staked out the right side of the house, Moore and Anderson the left, and HSUS volunteer Jane Garrison monitored a small boxy hole in front of the house, through which the rescuers hoped to flush the terrier.

"Go the other way, Jack," encouraged Anderson, in a tone meant to send the dog the opposition direction. "This is not the best way to go…It's very bad for a Jack."

"Go on, Jack," yelled Earnest from the other side of the house. "Go through the hole."

"I'm your best hope, Jack," Garrison cooed at the animal, looking to entice him to her waiting leash.

HSUS rescue workers successfully rescue a Jack Russell trapped under a house.

For whatever reason, the dog followed orders. He eventually peeked his head through the boxy hole, just enough for Garrison to place a leash on him and hold on for dear life. The next step was to extract the dog from the small hole itself, not a simple task given that a water spout also blocked the exit. There was only a tiny space through which the dog could slip, and a rescuer could not afford to pull the animal through it, and risk injury to the dog.

To accomplish this final step, Moore crouched down next to the opening and waited until the dog's head was close enough to the hole to grab his scruff. When the moment arrived, Moore's gloved hand moved quickly, grabbing the loose skin on the back of the dog's neck and holding on tightly. He then gently pulled the Jack Russell through the hole and escorted the animal to the awaiting truck.

"Congratulations," Moore said to Garrison.

"It's teamwork," Garrison said right back.

"All right," Earnest chimed in. "Next!"

Tim Carman is managing editor of hsus.org.