The rest are receiving care and attention from hundreds of volunteers, who feed and water the pets twice daily and walk those that need it several times a day.
At the Expo Center, volunteers hose down dogs to prevent overheating, and vets check the animals regularly, stroking horses' noses and making sure sleeping animals are still alive, said the
Los Angeles Times report.
Many animals arrive at the shelters with various ailments, most of which can be attributed to stress, according to the report in the
Houston Chronicle. Vets are seeing lots of diarrhea, nausea and colds. Scrapes and bruises are also common among animals that escaped their homes after being locked inside.
Though thousands of animals have been rescued from New Orleans floodwaters, the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine still receives "thousands of calls a day from people who had to leave their pets behind," Dr. Becky Adcock, a vet with the school, told the
Houston Chronicle.
"They're asking us to do what they can't, to rescue their pets. We tell them we will do what we can."
The school's Web site is encouraging people searching for pets, those wishing to shelter their pets, those who have found lost pets, those wishing to foster pets and those who'd like to volunteer to help pets in need to visit the Animal Emergency Response Network's Web site at
http://www.pets911.com/services/katrina/index.php.
