ABANDONED HORSES ARE LATEST TOLL OF DRUG TRADE

PHOENIX - Found tottering alone in the desert with their ribs visible
and their heads hung low, horses play a backbreaking, unappreciated
role in the multibillion-dollar drug smuggling industry.

Mexican traffickers strap heavy bales of marijuana or other illegal
drugs to the horses' backs and march them north through mountain
passes and across rough desert terrain. With little food and water,
some collapse under their heavy loads. Others are turned loose when
the contraband gets far enough into Arizona to be loaded into vehicles
with more horsepower.

"We would pick up 15 to 20 horses a month, and many more of the
animals would get past us," said Brad Cowan, who spent 28 years as a
livestock officer for the Arizona Department of Agriculture before
retiring a few months back. "They wear poorly fitted equipment. It's
obvious they were not well taken care of. The makeshift saddles rub
big sores in their backs."

Even once rescued, the horses face an uncertain future. Since they are
not from the United States, the state of Arizona must draw their blood
and conduct a battery of tests to ensure that they do not carry any
disease that would infect domestic livestock. Then the horses head to
auction, where some are bought and shipped back to Mexico for slaughter.

Others are luckier. They find their way to equine rescue operations,
which help place them with homes.

"We just got a horse in, and he's sticks and bones, and his feet are
horrific," said July Glore, president of Heart of Tucson, a rescue
operation that nurses the horses back to strength. "We get calls all
the time about abandoned horses. How many do I have right now? One,
two, three."

One, named Lucky, had his tongue almost cut in half from the sharp
wire bit put in his mouth. "I was told he was a drug horse," Ms. Glore
said.

Farther north, at the Arizona Equine Rescue Organization in New River,
Soleil K. Dolce said drug horses were just part of the problem. Ms.
Dolce responds to police calls about horses that have escaped from
illegal rodeos and are running down the street. Horses are also left
at freeway off-ramps or tied to fences by owners who no longer want
them, she said.

Rehabilitating them is expensive and time consuming, Ms. Dolce said,
and there is the possibility that some horses will never be adopted.

"I can't even describe the suffering these horses have gone through,"
Ms. Dolce said, petting Rim Rock, who was abandoned in Tonto National
Forest, east of Phoenix, several years ago and still suffers problems
in his hooves.

It is sometimes not clear when a horse is discovered exactly how it
came to be abandoned. State officials say the economic crisis has led
to many more animals being let loose by owners no longer able to care
for them. But the horses that are found with Mexican brands are
presumed to be smuggling horses. And sometimes the authorities have no
doubt: groups of horses or donkeys are discovered in the act, with
bales of drugs on their backs and their human guides hiding.

Last year, seven horses laden with 971 pounds of marijuana were
discovered by Border Patrol agents in the Patagonia Mountains in
southern Arizona. The human smugglers had fled.

"I'd get angry when I'd see the condition these horses were in," Mr.
Cowan said. "The smugglers would buy them or steal them on the Mexican
side and then work them almost to death. They have horrible sores that
can take months to heal up."

He recalled one horse he came across in Pima County, not far from the
Mexican border, that had deep wounds in its hide, was clearly
malnourished and was so weak that it was trying to sit back on its
hind end to take the weight off its legs. Mr. Cowan and a co-worker
had to carry the horse into a trailer.

Still, he said, horses are resilient. "They can come back from a lot,"
he said.

Some of the abused horses end up back in the rugged border region
where they were first found, Mr. Cowan said. Instead of smuggling,
though, they are sometimes used by law enforcement agencies to pursue
the traffickers who mistreated them.