Christine and I had just finished a leisurely trail ride around the farm when I made a terrible mistake. I said, out loud, "Tomorrow should be a pretty boring day. I've got nothing planned and Mike'll be working. I don't know what I'll do with myself."
As if on cue, my phone rang and Erin asked, "So, what're your plans for tomorrow?"I should have said, "Who wants to know?" Instead, I happily replied, "Nothing, why?"
"Anouk wants to know if I know anyone who would be willing to take her rig and drive to New Holland to pick up a horse. I told her I think you train on the weekends, but I didn't want to assume you don't want to do it."
"I need some details, but I'll think about it..."
I met Anouk in my Bluestone days. She had a broodmare boarded with us at the time. After I started working with SRF, our paths continued to cross Before I knew it, Anouk had started Horse Rescue United, a 501(c)3 non-profit that rescues horses from bad situations and places them in forever homes. I am not overly involved with the rescue, but I do think Anouk is doing things the right way. She only takes in horses that she has the funding to support. She does a lot to ensure their future safety without becoming a nuisance to their adoptive owners. She screens carefully, actually has a clue about horses, and doesn't let things slide just to get a horse out the door. Erin has been helping her out pretty extensively over the last few months and I've heard a lot of good things about the way the rescue runs. I was thrilled to death when I got to photograph one of her adoptable horses, Gem, at a cross country schooling at the Horse Park a few months back.
I had less than an hour between the barn and Haunted. In that time, I sent Anouk a Facebook message, telling her that I would need a plan of action and details on the horse. I mentioned that I was working late into the night, but would welcome a phone call to discuss details.
Anouk called me as I was heading up to The Farm to get into my make up.
The horse in question was a 13 year old standardbred mare by the name of Lucille A. She made $300k as a racehorse before producing a handful of foals. Her first one is two now, just starting his career. The last one was ripped from her side only days before I was scheduled to go get her. Her owner had her on a two week deadline for a new home. If one wasn't found, she was destined for the kill pen. I'm not sure how Anouk found out about her or how she picked this horse to rescue next, but I had heard whispers of fundraising and searches for a safe home. In the end, the owner sold her to the Amish for a hundred bucks and washed his hands clean of her, despite the fact that he knew HRU was trying to make room for her.
I'm not going to get off on a whole long rant, but I'm just going to make a side note here because I've found that a lot of people simply have no idea why horses need to be 'rescued' from the Amish. I don't mean to hate on a whole group of people, but the Amish are very hard on their horses. To the Amish, a horse is just a piece of farm equipment. It gets used for all it can handle, and then discarded and replaced. If that means leaving a horse that has served the family for 20 years suffering out its last few minutes in a heap on the street, so be it. More likely, however, an Amish horse that can no longer pull is sold for meat as a last chance for profit. To the Amish, a horse is not a pet. It is not considered to have a soul. The horses are often under fed, over worked, and beaten for putting a foot out of line. I'm sure that there are exceptions, but from what I've seen, I have nothing nice to say. I have rehabbed Amish horses from the brink of death. The look of defeat in an Amish horse's eyes is one I hope to never see again. Their bodies and minds are worn thin, beaten down, and hard to repair. I have seen former Amish horses with dents in their heads and missing teeth from regular meetings with 2x4's. I have seen crippled ex-Amish horses with legs so gnarled that they're beyond recognition. I have ridden Amish horses who, upon being saddled for the first time, look over their shoulders with a look that simply says, "What new means of torture is this?" It's a hard thing to see, and seeing tourists paying to see it up close makes me sick.Through sheer determination, Anouk had tracked down the Amish family that bought the mare and convinced them to sell her back for $160. The mare won over a quarter million dollars and all she's worth these days is a measly sixty bucks. Now all she needed was a ride to safety. My mission, should I choose to accept it, would be to pick the truck and trailer up at Winners International, drive to Lancaster County, trade the money for the horse and her papers, drop the horse off at SRF's former facility, and get back in time to get back in ghost garb.
Sure. Why not?
I called Tor, but she was working. She called me back in between wagons later that night and I was able to pick up long enough to say, "I don't have time to talk right now. I'll give you details later, but can you meet me at my house at 9am tomorrow? I need to make a six hour road trip to save a horse."
"Sure, call me later. If I don't pick up, I'll see you at 9am."
You gotta love that girl :)
On Saturday morning Mike left for work and Tor arrived. We sucked down some coffee then made our way to Winners International, getting slightly lost along the way because I'd only been there once, and only as a passenger.
Anouk had left the rig parked behind one of the barns. I was in for quite a surprise. I should have known something was up when she texted me to warn me not to pull on the seat belts. We found a Ford hooked up to a heavy steel, green, three horse, slant load, goose neck trailer. The interior of the truck was a bit of a disaster, although we did find a bag of chips to snack on over the course of the drive. The seat belts, it turns out, had been cut. It was nice to know I'd be hauling a heavy trailer down the NJ and PA turnpikes without seat belts. Eek! But the real joy came when we turned the truck on and started to haul. I know that diesel trucks are supposed to be loud, but this rig took that to a whole new level. The noise it made while coasting down hills was unbelievable, and don't get me started on the fact that it wanted to red-line every time I put my foot on the gas. Seriously, the truck screamed just trying to stay at 55mph on a flat, open road. At least the brakes worked!At one point, while coasting down a hill, the truck suddenly went silent. I held my breath and, moments later, the noise resumed.I sighed in relief and asked Tor, "Am I the only one who was a little alarmed when the truck went silent?"
"Dom, I hate to tell you, but I've been living in a state of constant alarm since you started this thing."
It was quite the driving adventure and we were hoarse from shouting over the din of the motor, but I'll admit that it wasn't terrible once I got used to it. If I needed to do an emergency transport, I would definitely take the rig again.
'
Thankfully, the drive turned out to be largely uneventful. We made good time, didn't hit any traffic, and learned to work around the pain in the ass GPS on the dashboard. Before long, we hit the rolling hills of Lancaster County. Fields full of cows, mules, and horses surrounded us and signs depicting horse drawn buggies reminded us of the local culture. The streets were scattered with manure and there were more barns than houses. We rattled over a narrow bridge, turned down smaller and smaller roads, and eventually parked under a clothesline strung between a house and barn, our final destination.
We were met by an Amish woman with a toddler in tow. She greeted us kindly and asked if we were there to pick up a horse. I introduced myself, feeling rather sheepish in my tank top, and told her which horse I was there for.
The woman shouted to a girl who was grooming a skinny appaloosa in the barn. Moments later, the standardbred mare materialized in front of me on the end of a rope that may as well have been a shoelace. She danced around nervously, eyes wide, head high, and nearly knocked over the little boy in the driveway. I grabbed her halter, pulled her in a tight circle, and shouted for Tor to grab a chain shank while the Amish woman scooted the boy to safety.As soon as I put the chain over the mare's nose, she settled down completely, looking at me as if to say, "Hey, you've actually handled a racehorse before!" I took the opportunity to check her lip tattoo to make sure I had the correct horse. Then I turned around and matter-of-factly led the mare onto the trailer.
I traded cash for the mare's papers, thanked the woman for her help, and pulled the trailer out of the farm. A group of three horses in varying degrees of skinny gawked at us from behind a single strand of rope that enclosed a tiny patch of grass behind the barn.
I breathed a sigh of relief as we made our way back toward the highway. I was grateful that there was no arguing, that the whole thing had been very straight forward. I've been in situations in the past where someone agrees to sell a horse to a rescue, then throws a fit even after the money has been exchanged. This time I didn't get chased off an auction lot with a shovel, so that's an improvement.
Tor and I settled back for the long drive back to Jersey. Then Anouk texted me, asking if I could just leave the trailer at the old SRF farm. For quarantine reasons, she didn't want it at the track. That would be all well and good, except I'd left my car at Winners. I told her we'd figure it out though, and planned a brief detour at our house to stop for Tor's car. I'd have her follow me the twenty minutes to the mare's new home, then have her bring me back to my own car at the training center.
Sadly, Bryce missed the opportunity to see the horse in his driveway (and to watch me back a goose neck out of suburbia). I think the neighbors were thinking, "It was bound to happen some time."
Shortly after that, I pulled into SRF's old farm. It was strange to be back (and to be allowed on the property again!) I knew SRF had run the property into the ground, but seeing it in person really made the point hit home. The fields look like they're part of some kind of barren scrub land, and the fences are alternately tacked together and missing entirely. The poor landlord's best bet is to level the whole thing and use it for something other than horses. It's a total waste because it used to be a gorgeous and valuable facility.Lucille, who had spent the entire trip pawing and rocking the trailer, unloaded quietly and gaped at her new surroundings with white-rimmed eyes. I walked her down to the quarantine pasture, showed her where here water and hay were, and set her loose for a few pictures before locking her in the catch pen, the only place with semi-reliable fencing.
The mare is safe and I feel like I did a good thing. Unfortunately, the quarantine field is only a month long solution and HRU is racing to find a permanent home for her before the time runs out. I know they have someone lined up in Connecticut who is interested in her, so I'm hoping that works out. I don't think the mare is much to look at and she was understandably pretty uneasy about all the upheaval in her life, but she seems like a well-mannered girl under all of that and she has a kind and intelligent eye. Every horse deserves a second chance and I think this girl found hers.
