A day of observation

I didn’t really sleep last night. I think it was the utter silence of the place. The occasional braying of a random burro and the darting of my rabbit across the carpet floor seem all the more jarring when disrupting the quiet that completely envelops the sanctuary at night. Nonetheless, I woke up this morning ready to confront the challenges of the day.

Today was spent for the most part “observing.” At 9:30 ReeAnn, a friend of Barbara’s who owns a feed store and trains horses came to work with Adam and Claudia. Claudia, originally from Germany, plans to be come a veterinarian and aspires to open a center here in California for retired race horses, like “Old Friends” outside Georgetown in Kentucky. Adam, a music major in undergrad, is primarily interested in the sustainable farming side of the sanctuary here so he works with Barbara on taking care of the alfalfa field and he “fixes” things around the farm. ReeAnn is working with them weekly on both riding bareback and on training horses, with the goal that eventually three already domesticated horses will be able to be ridden around the perimeters so the fences can be checked. I got to watch them ride Memphis, a crossbreed called a “warmblood” – the explanation of which I can’t remember at present, but suffice it to say he is a very large bay colored horse with a black mane. Memphis is at the “top of the pecking order” Barbara says, and understandably so since he’s a good three hands taller than the rest of the domestics.

After they each rode him for a bit, ReeAnn brought out Rio – a former winning race horse who apparently broke time records at race tracks in L.A. He’s a good deal smaller than Memphis, but that also means he has a lot more movement. He’s a lighter bay colored thoroughbred, recognizable by the branded numbers on the back of his neck right under his mane, a reminder of his former life. ReeAnn rides him first, and this is the first time he’s been ridden for a number of years. And even then, it’s unknown whether he’d ever ridden for purposes other than racing. However, he’s seems a bit familiar with having a normal-sized person on his back and though a bit spunky, generally recognizes the role of the harness and trots about at a pace lighter and faster than Memphis. Adam finally jumps up and its obvious that due to Rio’s smaller size a good deal more balance is required to keep your place on his back and not on the barn floor. I watched Claudia stride about on Memphis while Adam did his best to remain in his seat and gallivanted around on Rio.

Finally they dismounted and, to my surprise, ReeAnn told me to give it a shot. So with a boost I jumped up on the back of Memphis and Claudia walked me around for a bit. I’ve only ridden once before, and that was on a saddled horse. I can tell you this – riding bareback is much different! I scooted up to right behind his shoulder blades and wrapped my fingers in his mane, clamped my legs against his sides and just did my best to relax and balance myself with each jutting step he took. I managed to stay put, but I couldn’t imagine the balance it would take to stay put if he decided to jump into a trot, or even more difficult, if I was on a smaller horse! After dismounting I helped brush the two horses down and I got to watch them catch and begin to harness train two young colts.

After a day of observation, around 2 pm we took a break for lunch. After lunch I went with Barbara to pick up Mary, the lady who mans the office here, and then go on to “town” – Susanville, a town half the size of Georgetown about an hour’s drive away – to get dog food, Senior (pellet food) for the older horses, and to get my groceries. Just as we were dropping Mary back off at the sanctuary we say Claudia waving us down. She was standing in the carrel of Annie, a thoroughbred and one of the sanctuary’s oldest horses, and Annie was laying down and wouldn’t get up. We all went over and they began to try to coax her up. Claudia said she just went down and then kept looking at her stomach – a bad sign of possible colic, one of the major killers of horses apparently. They finally got a harness around her and got the elderly lady to her feet. Barbara came back with shot of “Vicadin for horses” and injected Annie with it. Claudia then took her out of the carrel and walked with her a bit to make sure she wouldn’t lay down again. Annie threw up a couple times during the walk. Claudia told me later that they’re not sure how much longer she will last. She has lemonitis and they give her painkillers each morning with her Senior. She could go any day now. She’s pretty old for a horse apparently. The barn and the carrels next to it are reserved for the oldest domestics. They lost their oldest horse this December, at an age of 36. Apparently to calculate a horse’s age you multiply its years by 3.3. Thus, any horse over the age of 20 is considered older, and those in their 30s are ancient. Annie is about 28.

After we decided Annie was going to make it through at least one more day, Barbara and I headed to Susanville. With an hour’s worth of silence to break, we chatted about tons of things – her old job, my future job and the various possibilities as to what it might be, the way kids are raised today, her friend that published the only case law book on animal law out there today, her aspirations for the sanctuary among other things. Once in range of town, and therefore also cell phone towers, I made the crucial call to the family to let them know I was alive and well and that Dreamcatcher Horse Sanctuary was in fact a horse sanctuary and not merely a cover up for a cult or something. After buying far more groceries than I needed (likely in part due to my being on the phone all the while thus allowing me to buy more cereal and cookies than I realized), Barbara and I headed back.

This time our conversation was more focused. I asked her what BLM was because she had mentioned the name earlier without much fondness in her voice. She told me it is the Bureau of Land Management, the controller of the expanse of public lands that surrounded us as we drove back to the sanctuary. As controllers of the public lands they therefore also control the Wild Mustangs that roam on them, or rather, did. A law was passed in 1971 that set aside 300 reserves across the country on which wild mustangs could live. Somehow, they’ve managed to eliminate all but four of them and now there are hardly any wild mustangs actually out on these reserves and there are somewhere in the range of 28,000 in government holding centers waiting to be sold to willing buyers. On a related note also unbeknownst to me, horse slaughter has been primarily outlawed and only three slaughterhouses still exist and those three are currently shut down, most likely permanently. Apparently the thoroughbred industry, formerly advocates of slaughter, did a complete 360 and argued in Congress against it. So though she does dislike horse racing, Barbara says she has nothing bad to say about the thoroughbred industry. So back to my point, Barbara said she’s been just waiting for someone to find a way to take the BLM to court over the displacement and sale of the wild mustangs without Congressional permission. She gave me her copy of her friend’s Animal Law book to browse through. She got me incredibly interested in this situation to the point that I think I’ve now discovered my IWP topic.

When we returned we looked out to the pasture of Spanish Mustang mares and Barbara noticed a new baby that had to of been born during the short time we were gone. It was only a few hours old at most and it was already hobbling along on legs that were far too long for its body. It struck me that in the same day we nearly lost one of our elderly horses and a new baby mustang was born. I realized I am going to learn a lot about life and its courses over these next two months.