The Storm Before Dawn

Chapter 1

It was only 5 am but when you live on a rescue a call can come at any time from anywhere.

Hi, I'm Asha and I live with my mom, Andrea, on a horse rescue called Last Chance. Last Chance is a horse rescue that rescues abused, neglected, or starved horses. Then we train them and put the up for adoption.

At Last Chance when someone adopts a horse we have a team that goes out to check to see if the place the horse is going to go to is suitable. Most of our horses get forever homes but there is always those people that don't want the horse after a month or two.

Apart from having about 40 horses at Last Chance right now we have one dog Pepper mint, my puppy. And the last category of animals is our cats we have about 5 cats all of whom live in the barn.

This call was from a man about a hour away from my house. He said he had just been driving by a barn for work like he did every day, but today he saw these people beating a starving black mare that looked like it was on the brink of death.

My mom was up and waking me up in two minutes. We got out of the house in about five minutes and were on our way in our truck pulling a trailer.

Then suddenly I had a thought,
"Hey mom?"
"Yes?"
"Who is going to feed our horses?"
"I called Jacob"
Jacob was our stable hand that we had hired about week ago, he was still pretty new but he was great with horses!

"Wow you really were busy this morning," I said.

Luckily we have a stable hand or our horses would have to wait to be fed for quite awhile.

I am so glad school doesn't start for another month because then I don't get to go on rescues. When school starts I will be in 7th grade. I am going to Cash JR High. I hope school isn't too crazy because the rescues will need someone to ride them.

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Even though it was only 5:50 am there was heavy traffic. Normally this drive would have taken us an hour this time it took us a hour and a half! That drive gave me lots of time to think what I was going to name her. But none of the names I came up with were suitable.

I hadn't realized how nice this barn was going to be. Since they had a starving horse I had assumed it would have been run down and old. This barn was the exact opposite it was the nicest barn I had ever been to.

It had imported wood from Africa. It had the fancy stalls that you see in magazines that cost hundreds! The stalls had straw bedding and heated and air conditioned stalls and isles. The aisles were so clean I couldn't even see a piece of straw in them.

We walked in the barn for awhile before finding someone to talk to. And they were not the nicest. The lady we found would not tell us where the horse we wanted to see was. She said that no horses could be shown unless we had an appointment.

I didn't realize how fast my mom was at calling people but within twenty minutes a cop had shown up and the lady suddenly realized that we were serious. She stated rather nervously,

"Um... Well...Come this way."

We walked to the very back of the barn where it looked like no one had been in ages. It was one of those areas that you cant see from the front of the barn but was still there.

Then suddenly I saw her as soon as I saw her I wanted to throw up, she was so beat up and skinny. When my mom saw her she and the police officer immediately turned around and walked out. They came back and handed the lady, who I figured out was the owner or at least a friend of the owner, a slip of paper. She turned really pale and walked out of the barn.

"Asha?"

"Yeah?" I said

"Do you want to bring her to the trailer?"

"Can I?"

"Yes just make sure your careful"

"Ok!" I whispered. I didn't want to spook the mare anymore than she already was.

This was the first time that my mom actually let me do a rescue by myself, so I was really excited. However I knew that I couldn't let it show or the horse may panic even more.

As I looked into her stall for the first time I realized that it was so bad. I didn't know when this horse was last fed or had her stall cleaned. I knew I had to get her out of there. I slowly walked to where her halter was hanging in front of her stall, and as I reached out, my hand brushed against a filthy name plate. I pulled my hand away and it was covered in dust and dirt, and under all that dirt said: