Yesterday started out pretty normal

I was up and out at 6AM to feed then run to town for diesel.  I was supposed to meet the hay guy by 9:30, but on my way home from town I got stuck behind a house.  We crawled down the windy road at 5mph, stopping to make sure the trailer would make it around tight curves and the house wouldn’t hit power lines or low-hanging trees.  I didn’t even get home until 9:45 and the hay guy is another 20-25 minutes in the other direction.  When I got home I rescheduled hay pickup for 11 and returned a call to the Wetzel county sheriff’s office about some starving horses they wanted to seize, but had to leave a message with the officer in charge of the arrest.  Left for hay at 10:30 and was back home and unloaded by 12:30, at which point there were several phone messages and emails from Michelle saying the officer wanted us there NOW to get those horses and cows. 

That’s where the day deviated from normalcy.

Got the trailer hooked up and alerted another friend that wanted to rescue the two bull calves.  It’s a 45 minute trip with an empty trailer to where the horses were kept.  Serenity’s fuel filter light kept coming on and the poor truck had very little power going up hill.  Lovely.  Met up with Michelle and the officers at 2pm about six miles from the horses, then followed them in.  We had heard that this woman, who was also charged with 18 counts of neglect in Ohio and was told she could no longer own horses in Ohio, likes to shoot first and ask questions later.  While dodging bullets sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, we were told to wait a little ways down the road and the officers would go in first and come back for us when things were safe.  The owner wasn’t even there for the first trip, so all was well.  There were six horses, three of them in bad condition.  There was no grass at all for them to eat and we didn’t see any evidence of hay in the paddock, but there were eight bales in the barn that the officer said wasn’t there the day before.

Channel 9 news was also there to cover the seizure.  While I wasn’t happy about being on the lens side of a camera, I was tickled that those horses were getting the media coverage that they deserved! 

We loaded the two ponies in Michelle’s trailer and two of the worst horses in mine, then headed home.  Once we got to my place, Willow, Mariah, and Kita had to be kicked out of the quarantine paddock and put out with the main herd.  Now they have a leader that actually leads and protects –  good girl, Kita!  The whole herd is very interested in Mariah and when I came home with the last two horses they were all standing around just staring at her and wondering where the little tyke had come from.  It was adorable!

Anyways…  Got the first four unloaded and in the quarantine, then Michelle went home and I hit the road leading the other friends that were taking the cattle.  We got back to the officers around 5:20 and the owner of the horses was there.  Unexpectedly, she was nice, polite, and willing to voluntarily surrender four of the horses!  She also gave me her eight bales of hay and the remaining sweet feed that she had.  After everything I had heard about this woman, this was a total shock!  She gave me all the names and ages of the horses and claims they are all broke to ride.  Doc had also seen these horses before and I had talked to him for insight about their health earlier that morning.

 

We got the two bull calves loaded into the other trailer and that was quite the adventure!  One was easy and followed a bucket of feed with a rope around it’s neck.  The other wasn’t so easy, but fortunately it was smaller and there were several men there to wrestle it into the trailer.  These poor boys had not seen daylight since MARCH.  They’ve been locked in the bottom of a bank barn and it looked like it had never been cleaned out.  When the first one came out the door he had to shut his eyes and do a lot of blinking because he was unaccustomed to the light.

The other two horses loaded just fine and we were off once again for home.  I got home around 7:10, unloaded the horses, hay, and grain, then loaded up the water tank and headed back the other direction to town to get water.  The new horses were licking the hell out of the mineral block, but Kita and Willow hadn’t left them much water and there wasn’t any water that we could see in the paddock where they came from, so I knew they’d be thirsty.  Stopped in town for a quick bite to eat since I hadn’t eaten anything all day, got water, then headed home again.  Got home at 9PM, filled tanks and fed all the horses.  Finished feeding by 10:30. 

I gave Serenity a pat on the hood and thanked the old girl for working so hard and getting me through the day.  Checked on the new horses one last time, but they wanted nothing to do with me since they were ear-deep in the hay roll I had just put there that morning. 

I managed to hurt a few things during the day, between cattle wresting and my own exhausted klutziness, so falling asleep took a couple of hours.  Then we got one hell of a thunderstorm which had Cody and Stormy trying to crawl into bed with me for protection.  It was 2:30AM the last time I remember looking at the clock.  Then up at 6AM to do it all over again.  I must really love this work.

I’ll be blogging tonight over on Rescue Recoveries about the three horses in the worst shape and will let you know more about the other three tomorrow.