Volunteers at a Spring Valley horse farm say they'll be able to save more neglected horses and keep them fed this winter because of the funds they raised today.

It was Refuge Farms fifth annual open house.

At Refuge Farms every horse has a story.

"This is a horse that had been abused, that had been starved, that had witnessed violence," Director Sandy Gilbert says.

And a place to call home.

"We bring them here, we keep them here and even in death we keep them here," she says.

A home they share with Gilbert, a herd of volunteers and the public.

"You get attached to these animals, especially when they come to you and they're in pain and they're skinny and they're scared," she says.

Gilbert runs Refuge Farms, a horse rescue designed to help the desperate.

"We pull a level of horse called the dires, the horses that are typically too ill or too thin to slaughter," Gilbert says.

For some that help is simply a loving, peaceful passing.
For others, its an escape from a painful past.

"We have horses that have come and stayed as long as a day and they come here, they get comfortable and they lay down and say I'm done," she says.

Gilbert says she never thought she'd share her home with horses. Her corporate job kept her busy enough.
But, an animal in need captured her heart.

"What happened in my life is a young man handed me a lead rope to a crippled Clydesdale and said here Sandy, take this horse and make a difference with it. And so I had to do what he said cause he had given me the horse," she says.

Gilbert named that horse Francis Andrew, after the young man who saved her.
Frannie was the first to come to the farm, but not the last.

"This summer we rescued our 70th horse," Gilbert says.

Now, the barn is full, with sixteen horses keeping volunteers on the trot.

"There have been so many and I love all of them so much," she says.

And that love leaves her and her mission without a doubt.

"This is what I was born for, I know that," she says.