Spirit Wind Horse Rescue Newsletter

FALL/WINTER 2009

Picture by: Vendla Stockdale

 

 

Dear Friends of Spirit Wind Horse Rescue:

 

We knew it would come:  the frost, the long, cold nights, the changing leaves, even the snowfall on our pastures and in the mountains surrounding our quiet valley.

 

And so, we all must move into this new season and toward the final moments of 2009. 

 

And what a year it has been at SWHR!

 

Here are some of the changes and new additions to the SW family:

 

First of all, we bid a hearty “Happy Trails” to Board Member Connie Layton and April Wilson.  We thank both of these women for their service, both to our Board, and to the SW horses in their care.  We appreciate their hard work and dedication, and though they will be missed, we know they will both go on to add their energy and spirit to causes that make our world a better place.

 

We want to welcome our newest Board Member, Lee Heidrick.  He has joined our team as a board member, foster dad, and will assist with training.

 

 As far as our horse family, we both welcomed and watched two beautiful Morgan horses, ten year-old gelding Star, and sixteen year-old mare Brandy, go on to their forever home in Montrose.  They are both sweet, amazing spirits, and we wish them, and their new caretakers, a life filled with wonderful experiences together.

 

We also welcomed and said “Happy Trails” to Feather, a beautiful, white ten year-old Arabian mare.  She found her forever home in Crawford.  We know she will continue to live up to her name, adding her grace and loveliness to her new forever family.

Feather and her new mom

 

We welcome Chaz, a nineteen year-old thoroughbred, to the SW family.  In his former life, Chaz was a state champion hunter-jumper.  Now he is looking for a forever home that will take him on light trail rides and eventually see him into a well-deserved retirement.  He is a lovely, sweet boy with great manners.

 

We also welcome Cash, a sixteen year-old registered quarter horse.  His former life was as a 4-H horse so he is extremely well-trained.  He is a sweet boy, about 15hh, who just wants to be your best buddy and have a forever home.

 

We welcome Blaze, a five year-old grade gelding.  Blaze was acquired through our Strawberry Roan Fund.  The Strawberry Roan Fund is a branch of SWHR that allows us the resources to purchase and care for horses that are headed for slaughter at the Delta sales yard.  Blaze is a must see.  He will go back into training in the summer, and be ready for a forever home as soon as we determine how much he knows.  He is currently being fostered in Delta by another of our dedicated volunteers.

Blaze

 

We sadly said “Happy Trails” to herd member Ginger.  After being  lovingly nursed back to health by Connie, Ginger had a fatal case of colic shortly after being moved to a foster home with winter shelter.  As have all of the horses who leave us, she added a lot to our lives and will be missed.

In other news, we are proud to introduce you to Qwik, one of our wonderful volunteers.  Though there is no end to the gratitude we have for each of you and your unique contributions, we felt it was important to introduce all of you to Qwik in this newsletter.

 

Qwik is our fourteen year-old volunteer who has provided a loving foster home and great care to Shadow and Red, two twenty-something geldings that were left without adequate care in a local pasture.  Not only has Qwik devoted himself to them, he has also risen to the challenge of educating himself about how to give them the best care possible.  During their stay with Qwik, it became clear that it was time to say goodbye to Red, who had lived a hard life that had taken a toll on his body.  Qwik did something then that most of us adults have trouble doing.  He stayed with Red until the very end.  He did so with a courageousness and strength of spirit that seems so very rare these days.  We celebrate Qwik and his capacity to feel deeply and offer himself in service, no matter how difficult and painful. 

 

If there are more young people out there like Qwik and the other young people involved in SWHR, then we know that there is hope.  Thank you, Qwik, for the amazing young man you are.  You are a mentor for the rest of us, and we are glad you are a part of our team.

 

Qwik is now fostering Merrylegs, who has successfully weaned her foal and seen that foal adopted into a forever home.  Good luck, Shadow and Merrylegs.  You are in good hands with our Qwik!

Shadow and Red

Picture taken by Qwik

 

In other news, we have had some very exciting events lately.  The first was Spirit Made Whole, an exhibition of our Board President Vendla Stockdale’s photographic art, and writer Danielle Kemper’s poetry.  The exhibit ran from October 9^th through November 9^th 2009 at the Creamery Arts Center in Hotchkiss.  This exhibit featured photographs of the SW herd and accompanying poetry and prose.  All proceeds from the sale of these beautiful works were donated to SWHR.

 

Vendla and Danielle hope the message from this exhibit (that we all become respectful stewards of our world and all things in it) was shared, and that everyone will take action as much as they can, in the areas they are most passionate about.  Thank you, all who came out for the opening!  Look for Vendla and Danielle’s book featuring even more rescue horses and poetry very soon.

 

Vendla Hope (Vendla's rescue horse) & Danielle

 

Another spectacular event was The Kids’ Pasta Project dinner on November 2^nd at Scenic Mesa Ranch.  Because of the kids’ hard work and their wonderful fresh and local food, $175 was donated to SWHR.  What a fun night!  Thanks to everyone who attended and worked hard to make it happen.

 

We recommend that everyone attend one of these dinners…pick your favorite cause and join other members of your community to send resources their way.  There’s nothing like charitable eating!!

 

As for updates from SWHR, our favorite is reporting on the bond we have seen develop between Spirit, SWHR’s first rescue, and Steven Schultz, his buddy and forever home.  We have seen this horse go from a starved, abandoned being to a strong, kind, and confident ham who loves to pose for pictures.  Steven and Spirit spent all summer together taking lessons to improve their partnership with one another.  Steven was overheard the other day (don’t tell him we said this) waxing poetic about his time with Spirit and talking about how much he misses riding him all the time like he did in the summer.  Get your boots and long johns on, Mr. Schultz!  Your horse wants you to know he’s an ATP (All Terrain Pony) and doesn’t mind riding in the cold.  Your trusty steed is waiting for you in the back pasture!

 

Spirit and Steven

 

At SWHR, we like to stay current on horse related events in the news.  Perhaps some of you have been following the recent roundup of Cloud and his herd by the BLM in the Pryor Mountains of Wyoming.  The most striking detail for us here at SWHR about this roundup is the fact that approximately 30,000 wild horses are currently in captivity and living (many for years!!) in government-funded (that means we are all paying for them!) holding pens. 

Though these horses are rounded up and offered for adoption, many are not adoptable due to the difficulty of training an older non-domesticated horse to adapt to a life of domestication.  These horses and burros spend their lives in pens, waiting for homes that will never materialize.  In spite of this fact, the government still holds regular roundups and the wild horse, the spirit of the American West, is slowly becoming extinct.

We encourage you to take action by calling your elected officials and letting them know you oppose the forced extinction of these horses and want a humane, fiscally responsible plan for preserving and protecting the iconic, free roaming wild horses and burros of the American West.

Call President Obama at 202-456-1111 and the Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar at 202-208-7351 to demand an immediate moratorium on roundups until an accurate account of remaining horse and burro herds can be made and a new plan developed to both deal with animals currently in captivity and to effectively manage free roaming herds in order to strengthen and preserve them.  For more information, go to www.thecloudfoundation.org.

With that said, as always, we appreciate all of your efforts to make the lives of our equine friends better here at home.  We at SW truly believe in the adage, “Think Globally, Act Locally”.  We realize we’re all in this together, and together we will strive to consider the health of the entire planet while taking action in our own community.

Thanks to those of you who donated so generously this year; from hay (our horses are thanking you right now!!), to fencing panels, to the donation of time sweating out in the field bucking hay bales.  No offering is too small; everything makes a difference to our horses!

We would like to thank the ASPCA for a $1000 grant to our Geld Your Colt Program, another program branch of SWHR.  We are excited to offer assistance to Delta County residents to geld their colts.  We hope to lower the number of unwanted horses in our area with this program.

We would also like to thank the Quail Roost Foundation for their generous donation of $1000 to the Strawberry Roan Fund.  With this money we will be able to add to the purchase and care of slaughter-bound equine with the goal of adopting them into loving forever homes. 

With that said, we would like to leave you with the most exciting news of all.  But first, a story, borrowed from the movie, Under the Tuscan Sun.

In this movie, the heroine is pondering  a dream she had:  the creation of a home where the most important events of life would take place: a wedding, a birth, and the presence of family.  As she considers the work it has taken to rebuild the old abandoned Italian villa she purchased, she gets overwhelmed for a moment thinking she has done all this work preparing for events that might never happen.  As she begins to fall apart with this realization, an Italian friend tells her this:

Signora, between Austria and Italy there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering.  It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains.  They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice.  They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip.  They built it because they knew some day, the train would come.

This story resonates with us here at SWHR.  You see, we did the same thing.  We created this organization, hopeful that we could become a non-profit in order to help more horses, even before we knew if that was possible.

We are here to report that our train has come!  We are now an official 501(c)(3) organization!

Thanks to all of you who believed in us and added your support to our mission.  We look forward to 2010 and the difference we will make for the horses with all of you on our team.

As always, your donations are appreciated and celebrated, and are now tax deductible.  Feel free to earmark the programs within SWHR where you feel your donation will have the biggest impact.  Remember, your time is much appreciated as well! 

Thank you, from all of us two-and-four-legged beings here at Spirit Wind Horse Rescue.  May the rest of 2009 treat you well, and many blessings in 2010!

Be well,

Danielle Kemper and the SWHR Board Members

 

Hope and Love

All winter

the blue heron

slept among the horses.

I do not know

the custom of herons,

do not know

if the solitary habit

is their way,

or if he listened for

some missing one—

not knowing even

that was what he did—

in the blowing

sounds in the dark.

I know that

Hope is the hardest

love we carry.

He slept

with his long neck

folded, like a letter

put away.

 

(Jane Hirshfield, The Lives of the Heart)