Home

At Sunrise

I woke up early that morning and felt the cold chill of the autumn wind blow through my window. I rubbed the rising goosebumps on my arm as my bare feet hit the cold floor. I walked over to the windows and closed them flipping the latch over the handles as I slid the curtains shut and climbed back into bed. The whole day felt crummy. There was a scratching at my door before the door handle jiggled and I saw a cold, wet, black nose poke into the door frame that was followed by a big round blueish gray head and brown puppy eyes. "Tank I don't feel like cuddles right now." Ignoring what I had just said Tank made every effort to climb into the bed with me and he wasn't going to stop trying until I rolled over to give him room to climb up. "Tank I said I didn't want to be bothered!" I said turning my back to him. I heard him whimpering as I felt him throw his whole body weight onto the bed and climbed over me so he could snuggle up into my arms. "You're such a spoiled little brat." I said looking down at him as he looked up at me and licked my chin and nose rolling on his stomach for a belly rub. I scratched his stomach till he was satisfied and fell asleep next to me. I lived on a small farm with one of my best friends Kierstien and my therapy dog Tank with her cat October. We had a stables and a couple rescue animals. I provided many services to the public and helped them out with certain things like if they wanted to ride, adopt, train, get therapy, or even do a work study here at Safe Haven they were allowed to. By each stall was the story of each horse with pictures of their recovery and their medical records for when people who wanted to adopt did want to look at the animals and their process. Now keep in mind that I woke up before it was even light out. Yes I have to wake up to feed every animal individual and exercise every animal individually. Now of course I had Kierstien, Rachael who was the stable manager, Kyle our head stable hand, and Summer our trainer. All of them reported under Rachael who reported to Kierstien or I. Dr. Robin was a close family friend and the personal vet to all of the animals on my farmland. When I say we owned a few animals we have 24 horses, 3 snakes, 2 dogs, 1 mule, 1 turtle, and 1 cat. So excluding the humans I had 31 mouths to feed. Including the humans I had 35 mouths to feed. Each animal was up for adoption or rehousing, but most animals that were put up for adoption the people are put through a background check so we make sure all of our animals don't go to another abusive or neglected environment. We help most of our animals heal and most of our animals work for us. Each animal and human that works for us is treated with love and respect. Many people tend to get a little frustrated with us because we are strictly a no kill shelter. That means that no matter how old the animals are we take them in and take care of them. If the animal is sick or is in any way becoming harmful to the people that work at this shelter then we will at least put into consideration putting the animal down for the safety of the workers and for the safety of the other animals. We always do our best to nurse the animals back to health, but sometimes our best isn't enough and unfortunately sometimes we lose some animals. My job is to provide the best I can for these animals and people who need a second chance in life and I plan on explaining every story behind each animal. I treat and help train the animals as best I can and today was my day to work on Abby one of our painted horses.

Abby was with most of the other horses that came to the stables when the main city stables closed down due to lack of insufficient funds. They couldn't take care of most of their animals so they sold them all to us, well by sold they really just gave them to us and we have been working on them day and night to get them into reform and to get them to trust us. Now most of the horses they gave us I was already familiar with their behavior. Abby was almost as stubborn as they came. She was a real softy on the kids, but she gave us stable hands a run for our money. She would throw a fit and then prance around in your face because she believed you couldn't catch her and that's where she had one, but Abby was not one of our fastest horses so it wasn't hard to just lasso her down. Especially considering she was not a jumper and never jumped the fence we just had to lasso her while she was in the ring. Abby wasn't one of our neglected horses, but she was always treated with love and was fed plenty of treats by many of the kids. She was an easier beginner rider and the kids seemed to really love her. Once she was done with her breakfast and grazing I put a halter on her face and a lunging rope clipped to her halter. I walked her out into the outdoor ring and I started to lunge her around in circles. She trotted and pranced around for a little bit before I made her start to canter. She was one of our older horses so I didn't force her to push herself too far, but as long as she got her exercise in. Lunging was important because it not only strengthened the bond between the horse and the rider, but it also showed the horse who it was they needed to obey. It was times like these that I really got to appreciate the little bonding moments I had with the animals. This was my job this was why i did what i did.