Once upon a time, there was a lady who lived in the desert with her family and her chickens. She was not fond of the desert, and longed and longed for years and years to move somewhere green. One day, after 17 years, it looked like her wish might come true.
She prayed and prayed. And she tried to be patient, even though it was really hard.
After 4 months and lots and lots of patience {and prayers}, her wish came true. There was much packing, and with some tears of leaving good friends behind and having to rehome the 23 chickens, the family made their journey east. The plan was to live in the RV; all of them- 4 kids, 2 parents, 2 dogs and a cat- until their house sold.
The lady knew she needed to get a feel for the local real estate market, so she made a short list of houses to look at. Her number one requirement was that they be allowed to have chickens. Another deep desire was that it was close enough to work so her hunny could continue to come home for lunch. And, of course, it had to be the right space for their homeschooling family of three girls and a teenage boy.
With those things in mind, she made her short list of houses to look at, knowing it would be probably summer or early fall before they could get into a house.
Within 2 weeks, said lady was going out of her mind in that small, small, space, what with 4 kids, 2 parents, 2 dogs and a cat. She began to think that the housing market would have to wait, because she was going to have go back to the desert until the house was sold.
To get her out of the small, small space, she decided she would at least look at a few houses; one of which was a new listing and piqued her curiosity, because the pictures were confusing. That first day, she went to numerous houses, but the one ‘confusing’ listing stole her heart…………
{If you read back, you can see the drama of getting to closing……}
Within the first week of moving into the heart house, a few things happened. Most of the neighbors stopped by to say hello and to introduce themselves. This was very interesting, because in the heart house, there were no other houses that could even BE seen. So, to meet all the neighbor people in the unseen houses was a fantastic and unexpected joy.
The biggest thing that happened, though, was that they began to realize from talking to the new neighbors that the 5 horses in their front yard were abandoned. The neighbors had been sporadically feeding the poor horses.
Upon further inspection, the lady and her family realized that the mama horse with the new colt was actually starving to death, and was going to die in the next week or so, if something wasn’t done right away.
The tipping point came one day when the lady went out front to see the horses in the front yard and realized that not only were they not being fed, but they also had no water. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
The lady saw red. 😡After getting the horses water, she packed up her oldest daughter, and they drove 20 some miles one way to get the horses food. She explained the situation to the nice folks at Tractor Supply, and came home with lots of food for the horses.
Over the next month and a half, the lady and her family continued to feed the horses. They paid for food, for the vet, and for the farrier. They began working on a permanent solution for the horses
And that was the birth of a new horsey family………………………….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I can’t begin to tell you how *furious* I was when I realized they had no water. And that the folks we had seen who seemed to be feeding them were another neighbor’s kids who came every now and then to see if they had hay.
I absolutely REFUSE to watch an animal starve to death, particularly one as intelligent as a horse, and in my front yard, no less. Not gonna happen.
So. Here’s what’s out front. There are two Saddllebreds; a mother and her son. Flicka is 16; Boi is about 5 or 6.
She was pregnant when brought here, and we’ve heard her price tag was $10,000. As far as we know, she has never been ridden, but we think she’s had some work done prior to coming here. Boy has not had any work done.
Halo is a 16-year-old champion barrel racer and is a Quarter Horse. She has a three-month old colt (he was just born when we saw the house for the first time) that is a Quarter Horse/Saddlebred cross.
Blondie is also Halo and Boi’s offspring. We think she’s around 2 years old.
We’ve got Halo in the pen up front with Elia (the baby) and she’s a bit sad to be separated from the others. She’s getting a ton of food everyday, in accordance to what they vet has told us to do. We’ve got her blanket on her when it’s cool/cold because she has no body fat to keep her warm, and she needs all the calories she can get. We figure she’s gained about 200-250 lbs since we started feeding her, but she needs at least 300 more.
I am not joking when I say death was imminent.These pictures were taken when she had added maybe 100 lbs. Baby was awfully skinny, too, because she didn’t have much to give him while she was starving. Had we not intervened, they would both be dead by now.
Did I mention that none of these 5 horses are even ours?
It’s a complicated situation, but we are hoping to get custody of the horses and also the land that surrounds our property, so that we can add our own horses and not have to deal with a whole lot of fencing.
In a perfect world, we would get the land and end up with a working farm, that would allow us to be a rescue horse sanctuary, without going bankrupt. This is a work in progress, which we pray won’t take too much longer to settle. The horses need hay, but I am loathe to feed a lot of horses that could be sold out from under us. Either way, they need more hay soon, and we’ll keep feeding them and getting the ticks off.
Chickens are on the list, too, but we have a lot of work to do first.
In the process of taking care of the horses, we’ve completely fallen head over heels in love. We are in love with the land, with the house, with the area, and with the horses. We would not have made the leap into horses if it wasn’t for our awesome neighbors, D, and his daughter, S. The girls are exchanging work and feeding for riding lessons, and we all couldn’t be happier!
Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Horsey Tale, which will have more pictures documenting our adventure and our creatures…………………… 😀
You have a lovely family Tikk — blessings to you for taking care of those beautiful horses. Shame on the people who abandoned them. I wish the world were perfect because surely those horses would be yours by now. Good luck!
Thank you, PDX, We absolutely love them. I really do think God has brought us here not just for us, but for those babies, too. The man who owns them was the one doing drugs and now his brother has power of attorney over his stuff, but the last we talked to him, he “didn’t know anything” about the horse. Have to run……
I feel furious when I see animals being abused or neglected. How can someone just walk away & leave a living, breathing animal without food or water? I hate that drugs robbed this person of their ability to care about someone or something besides themselves. Thank goodness you came along to care for these precious babies! Bless you! Happy New Year to you, your family & your new babies! I hope it all works out for you.
And we are talking years of abuse here, by an individual who used to be *very*, very prominent in this area {as in, everyone in town knows our house and about this person because it was all over the news, given the position in society} and is estimated to be at least in the late 50s. We’re not talking a spring chicken here, or someone who just fell into this.
We are talking about someone who used to have a lot of money and did a lot in the show horse community. And that was the side business.
While I’m inclined to feel sorry to a point for this person, she/he had years to get things straightened out and to change her/his ways and not just recover from the drug abuse, but to also set her/his life back to right. At some point, it becomes a situation where the person did it to her/him self.
But. To have animals suffering as a result of neglect? No. I have no idea why no one called animal control before. We had been feeding for a few weeks when they stopped by, so someone did eventually call, once she started gaining weight. Now she’s in good enough shape to where she won’t be taken, but still. There is no excuse, imo.
And the brother that has POA- the horses should have been his responsibility, ultimately {I’m pretty sure legally he would be responsible}. In NM, failure to report on a horse is a felony, and anyone who saw the condition and didn’t report it could go up on charges.
That he was unwilling to do anything for them makes me really angry, too. He knew what was going on with his sibling, and he was still getting mail at the house, despite being told by the PO numerous times that he legally could not. Given that he was out here nearly every day and chose not to check on the horses, that’s not ok on my list, either.
Part of what’s hard is knowing that the brother can- and probably will- yank them all away from us, now that we’ve gotten them healthy and doing well again. Breaks my heart to think so, but I have no basis for thinking he’ll do the right thing. 😦
At the end of the day, I can sleep at night, knowing we did the right thing regardless.
Happy New Year to you and your family as well! 🙂
I would think you would have some legal recourse to claim the horses based on the animals being abandoned. If not, if he lays claim to them, then definitely go after him for your costs to bring them back to health. Happy New Year!
Problem being, they are not totally on our property. If they were, it would be a done deal. We are trying to play nice so they will sell us the land outright. If not, we will have to wait until it goes to auction, which probably won’t happen until the fall. *sigh* I am just ready to have that end of things done……
I am so sorry you are having such a rough time lately. I think it’s probably worse because these are living, breathing beings. I wish you the best of luck in getting the extra land & the horses. I will remember you in my prayers. Please keep me posted.
Thanks. 🙂 We just got 10 round bales (hay) out there today. Met someone else out at Tractor Supply this morning. New contact made and learned some history. ….:)