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Updated: 12:16 AM Sep 18, 2006
"Horse Rescue"
A Spring Valley horse farm welcomed the public to its fifth annual "Open Barn" fundraiser for neglected horses. Posted: 9:46 PM Sep 17, 2006Reporter: Lindsay Veremis |
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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.
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It was Refuge Farms fifth annual open house.
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At Refuge Farms every horse has a story.
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"This is a horse that had been abused, that had been starved, that had witnessed violence," Director Sandy Gilbert says.
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And a place to call home.
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"We bring them here, we keep them here and even in death we keep them here," she says.
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A home they share with Gilbert, a herd of volunteers and the public.
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"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.
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Gilbert runs Refuge Farms, a horse rescue designed to help the desperate.
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"We pull a level of horse called the dires, the horses that are typically too ill or too thin to slaughter," Gilbert says.
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For some that help is simply a loving, peaceful passing.
For others, its an escape from a painful past.
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"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.
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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"This summer we rescued our 70th horse," Gilbert says.
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Now, the barn is full, with sixteen horses keeping volunteers on the trot.
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"There have been so many and I love all of them so much," she says.
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And that love leaves her and her mission without a doubt.
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"This is what I was born for, I know that," she says.
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