Our sanctuary story started with a draft horse named Jay. Some people always have dogs growing up; others always have horses. This turns into a problem when life starts throwing up obstacles, and the horses get less and less care, less attention, and less love. Jay lived that experience, and before that, he was used as a work horse and had deep chunks missing from his flanks from being whipped and beaten to prove it. His life had been stark, and when he came to us he was the kind of underweight that showed all his ribs and hip bones, and his legs were deeply infected from untreated chronic progressive lymphedema.
Jay could have had lots of reactions to his past, but he let me love him, even when I didn’t know what I was doing. He was enormously tall, and he let me put my heart against his sternum and lean into him as he leaned into me. We spent dozens of hours together as I held his head in the cold as Andy treated his legs in the bottomless job of healing his wounds and keeping his feathers trimmed and clean. We listened to Iron and Wine’s “Trapeze Swinger” hundreds of times together. When he looked into my eyes, my heart fluttered like I was a teenager seeing a crush.
Jay’s legs caused him pain, and we worked, no matter the weather, no matter the rest of life, to keep that pain at bay. There were times when Andy and I would be in the middle of an argument and we’d stomp down to the barn seething at each other but ready to work together to keep Jay healthy. We would wash his legs in the dark after a long day, between other jobs, whenever: carrying steaming water from the bathtub out of the house in winter, attempting to use the hose in summer, never giving up.
So when Jay left the pain of his body on October 6, 2023, I felt like I left with him. W.H. Auden’s words were the closest I can come to explaining Jay:
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song…
Our two remaining horses, our paint mare Chey and our appaloosa gelding Flash, grieved with us. Flash was never far from Jay, and he stood with us as our vet released Jay from his body, and he stood watch over him all day as Andy prepared to deliver Jay to his resting place. Chey distanced herself from us, quiet and apart. It took us all a long time to begin to heal.
So with Jay’s story, the depth of love we had felt and then lost, we were not able to take in another horse. It was more than just our grief that made this decision; logistically we were not prepared. I became extremely sick in January and needed almost six months to recover enough to be able to do regular chores again. We had no quarantine space for horses. We had a high school graduation to prepare for and then a college freshman to send off. There was no place in our sanctuary life or our private life for a new horse.
In August I received a call from a woman asking about a mare. She’d bought her from an auction pen– the worst place in the world for a damaged horse. We in the U.S. do not slaughter horses for meat; we simply ship them to Canada and Mexico and let them do it. Josie found this mare scarred, beaten, and with 17 years behind her as a broodmare, and she knew she had to buy her. Josie’s belief was that she would rehabilitate this mare, named Lily, and sell her on to an approved home.
But Lily had a lifetime of pain and fear to release, and the more Josie worked with her, the more she realized that this mare could not be rehomed to a riding family. Without a malicious thought in her head, the mare, full of love and desperate for affection, was dangerous under saddle due to the panic that being “worked” had trained into her.
In August I gave Josie some names and contacts I hoped might help. We turn down around 100 animals a year due to lack of resources, but I always work to try to help people find solutions. Josie called me while I was in the shower, and I remember clearly standing there dripping coming up with potential helpers for her situation. The thing I knew for sure was that we could not take this mare.
But then. Well, you know what happened then, or this wouldn’t be a story at all.
In July I applied for and received a grant for new intake care– I’d written it to cover the medical costs of our nine newly born piglets, delivered by Stardust, another resident who came to us starved nearly to death. Receiving this grant from the Foxwynd Foundation was thrilling. But when we discovered a local vet who would spay and neuter all of The Comets for half the cost of transporting them to Tufts, we were once again thrilled, as we had doubled the effectiveness of the Foxwynd grant.
Only thing was, it was for new intakes. Oh… no….
In October Josie called me back. She’d had no luck finding anyone she trusted with Lily. She was running out of time, as her hay supply was getting low. Could I think, she wanted to know, of anyone who might be a good home for a mare with deep trauma who couldn’t be ridden?
Yeah, I could think of someone.
I emailed our board, all of whom agreed that this mare needed to come home to us. And on November 9, our first open volunteer day, Lily arrived at Darrowby to be greeted by Andy, Melinda, and me, and our 18 volunteers.
Her fear was tangible; she spent the most of that day cantering the fence line and looking in the direction Josie had driven away. But she also craved affection and buried her head against us as we stood and spoke with her. When we put her into her stall that night she got very anxious to be inside an enclosed space with a human, but gentle words, hay, and lots of cookies helped her relax.
Looking over her paperwork, we saw that Lily was actually her birth name, not the name Josie had given her. We decided to give her a new freedom name. She is Fiona.
Over the next few days she followed us everywhere when we were in her pasture, and she, Flash, and Chey, whinnied to each other at all hours. Chey had a spark in her eyes and a spiritedness in her stride I hadn’t seen in a long time. Flash made repeated tiny “wimble-wimble” calls, prancing like Pepe Le Peu.
When it was time for introductions, Fiona was anxious. She squealed and stomped, but she didn’t run away. When we let them all share a single fence line, there was more striking and squealing, but this turned to parallel grazing and occasional fenceline galloping. On the afternoon that we had Fiona enter Flash and Chey’s pasture, everyone calmed so quickly that we were able to lead them all home together to the horse barn.
I can’t describe how full my heart was walking three horses home again. This work– the constant financial worries, the health concerns, the lack of privacy, the exhaustion– leaves only tiny cracks for the light to get in sometimes. I felt like I was taking a deep breath for the first time in over a year.
While Chey has made it clear that she is Head Mare In Charge Of All Things Darrowby, Fiona has grown in confidence. I’m still showing her how to play musical chairs and walk around the others to get to her hay bag when everyone decides to switch, but two days ago Chey tried to steal Fiona’s hay bag and Fiona stared her down. Chey isn’t easy to stare down. I don’t often manage it.
Fiona’s fear is dissipating, but there are still unexpected things that set her off: reaching for her while she’s eating, being approached with a folded-up blanket that could be a saddle, sudden changes in my direction. But she has already seen the farrier and stood for him like a statue, and on Thursday we had her teeth floated, and her alignment is great. She is a horse with so much to give, and she loves to be loved. Loves love.
She also loves food. Every morning now I come down the stairs to the horse stall, and Flash gallops inside and does his bucking bronco routine to tell me to hurry up, and Chey sticks her head in the front door and pins her ears at him to tell him to stop slowing me down, and then Fiona comes in the back stall door, not pushy, not upset, just so terribly happy that breakfast is served, and that she gets to eat it today, and isn’t that just wonderful?
She is wonderful. I’m so grateful to have her here with our special herd.