the Sage By Nature blog

What better way to start off the new year than with a good book, especially of the inspiring, true story kind that is captivating and well-written.

I just finished reading Horses of the Storm: The Incredible Rescue of Katrina’s Horses, a Christmas present, and I am highly recommending it. One caution with the recommendation, however; I found it difficult to get through the entire book without shedding some tears in multiple chapters. The author Ky Evan Mortensen, a key player in the equine rescue operations, does an outstanding job of bringing the reader into the eye of the storm of the rescue operation. You are right there with him as he wades through the muck and the mire and the stench, coming across equine corpses as well as exhausted and hungry animals grateful to be rescued. You are also right there when people fraught with worry, who have lost everything, are reunited with their beloved animals. The book is full of examples of the enduring, indominatable spirit of both animal and mankind as well as the awesome force of nature. Non-horse lovers too will find inspiration in the pages of this book. It is beautifully written, and I hope that we see more from this author in the future.

Mortensen has also included a chapter on emergency preparedness at the end of the book. In it, he gives advice on horse identification methods (from microchipping to duct tape), what to have in storage for your animals, etc.. One theme that ran throughout the book, and is touched upon again in this last chapter, is that the horses that had the best chance in the hurricane and its aftermath were the horses NOT locked in their stalls. There were many examples of horses whose stalls became their watery coffins. This has further impressed upon me the wisdom of keeping a horse in some kind of pasture arrangement and not locked in a stall where it cannot escape on its own – be it flood, fire, earthquake, or other disaster – like heavy snowfall caving in a roof (see earlier post!).

A portion of the proceeds of the book benefits the LSU Equine Health Studies Program.