My parents purchased our farm in 1978, when I was a child.  We moved here from California so my parents could be closer to their work in Portland and Seattle. As soon as we moved to the farm, my parents started my brother Rhet and sister Rao and I in 4-H. We went to the auction and bought our first horses. That was the beginning of my love for animals. My first horse was a Shetland pony named Diablo (he was just that) and time went on.

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Later down the road I had Tangy. You will find pictures of her on the walls in the merchandise store/museum. Along with the pictures of her you will find Rhets, Rao’s and my riding gear from when we were children. Our saddles, bridles, show halters, Rao's sheep grooming stand from when she had sheep and more are on display; come check them out! 

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Tangy and I went to a lot of training from 4-H to hunter jumper school in Portland and the 2 of us took award after award, and even went to state. She was my best friend. 

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As I said before, my parents moved here to be closer to work in Portland. There came a time when I was around 16 that they needed to be in Portland more than here at the farm. They bought a house in Beaverton and moved Tangy and I down there. Tangy and I spent a lot of time together at a barn in Beaverton over the next couple of years. She was still my best friend. Moving to the big city was a culture shock for me. I moved from one of the smaller schools in Washington to the biggest school in Oregon at the time. My parents introduced me to the granddaughter of the people who managed some apartments we lived in for a short time, and my life took a turn for the worse. Ericka showed me the "fun" of city life and some of the not-so-great things that can come with that life, like drugs. At that time, I chose that path and left Tangy, and this part of the story still breaks my heart. I left her at the barn in a stall, and the number of times I visited her became fewer and fewer. After quite a bit of time and my parents pleading with me to spend time with her, they decided it was best they sell her to someone who would give her the attention she deserved. They sold her and I never saw her again. I heard through the grapevine she was in Goldendale for a while, and became lame and passed away.... I don't even know where. This is one of the hardest things to talk about for me.  OUCH... typing that was heart wrenching but I needed to get it out to complete this story.

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Down my lifeline 25 years or so. I went through a drug phase, got married, had two children that I spent 15 years raising on my own, moved home and stabilized my life back here in the gorge. After raising my children, I decided it was time to get a horse again. I remembered over the last 25 years being the lady that stared into horse trailers just to see their heads and reminiscing about the fun and companionship I had when I had Tangy. So, I went on a mission to find two horses. 

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I went to visit my childhood 4-H leader and she had my "dream horse". Her name was Midget. I got on her and she was everything I wanted so I bought her and brought her home. I also picked up a spirited little guy named Pippy. And this is what started the "sanctuary". The story of Pippy and Midget is for another day. I had both of them for a short period of time. 

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After Pippy and Midget arrived … I should mention that I also work with children and young adults who have emotional and physical challenges. There was a young lady who had lost her father a year prior and had been spending time with Midget, Pippy and I. A friend of hers offered her a horse named Rio. Rio was living in a small-town north of the sanctuary and we decide to go pick him up. When we got to Rio’s house, he was in bad shape. He was 200 to 300 pounds underweight; he was in a small coral with no food or water to be seen, his tail was in a solid dread and had been trimmed to "make it look better". It took us 3 hours to load him, but once we did it was a relief and to the farm he came. We spent a week or so with him, and a trainer that was working with the young lady and I at the time noticed "swelling" in between his chest muscle. I loaded him up and to the vet we went. Rio had barely been touched in the 3 years he was at his prior home. The vet lanced the swelling and to my surprise he had Pigeon Fever, an often fatal bacterial infection that is transmitted by flies. The vet cleaned him up and back to the farm he came. The story goes on with me paying $500 for a horse I had already paid a $1200 (link to help pay vet bills) vet bill on because there was absolutely no way I was letting him go back to where he came from. Rio was the first "rescue" of the sanctuary. He came to stay in November of 2015, and he is still with us. 

 

Rio was the first true rescue but "the boys" were the first of my bucket list items to be checked off. They are the two horses on the sanctuary logo. Their names are Blackie and Jack. The horse slaughter pipeline is a brutal experience for a horse. There are many reasons horses and other livestock are put on feed lots, and the biggest one in our area is from round-ups of Native owned horses sold to "kill buyers" for horse meat. This is where Blackie and Jack came from. A horse rescue out of Enumclaw WA called Thunder Mountain Farms has a mission to save wild horses from the kill pens or feed lots. Their main mission is pregnant mares but often they fundraise for other horses on the lots as well. They had posted Jack and Blackie in search of a home. I jumped in. They were sick, young and unhandled but they were brothers and I was sucked in. I contacted Thunder Mountain and told them I could take them if they ran the fundraiser for the $1200 it was going to cost to save them from going to slaughter within the next 24 hours. Within 12 hours, the supporters of Thunder Mountain raised the money for the boys and I got to go pick them up. I will never forget the things I saw on that feed lot. It was horrific. The horses were scared, sick, fighting and anything else you can imagine the life of a horse’s perfect nightmare being. I can still hear the screams and see the scene clearly in my head of the trailer load of packed in horses behind me as we loaded the boys. The horses were fighting and biting each other and screaming in fear and pain. Just awful. Once the boys were loaded and I was getting in my truck the man driving the horses to Canada for slaughter took off down the freeway. I remember seeing the horses that had just been fighting trying to stabilize themselves in the packed trailer. They were so scared. The guy took off like a rocket with obsoletely no concern for the welfare of the horses. I wish I could remove the image from my head and share it.

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After that experience, it has become my passion to share the story of Jack and Blackie in order to raise awareness about feedlots, kill buyers, offering free animals on line, auction horses etc. If you ask me questions about this, you will open a can of experience and endless knowledge that will come from my heart.