At Sky Ranch Sanctuary we love Christmas: the chaos, the over-spending, the overeating, sugar indulgence…all of it. And we love sharing our Christmas enthusiasm with our horses. Our horses get carrots every day, but on Christmas we add in some Mrs. Pasture’s Cookies and apple slices. (OK, our horses are not strangers to those extra treats on other occasions, but at Christmas it’s a special mix of all the favorites.)

And we are grateful that these wonderful creatures get to enjoy our human celebrations with a full stomach, shelter, recreation time, and TLC. It’s chilly here on the California Central Coast today, and it really does feel like Christmas.The horses have their winter coats, and they are feeling especially frisky on these cool days.

We at Sky Ranch want to wish everyone, two legged and four legged, the Happiest of Holidays.

Some days I can’t believe how lucky I am to be part of Sky Ranch Sanctuary. Four years ago I could barely dream of taking on such a project. My two beloved Thoroughbreds had died of age related conditions, Snitch, my Arabian, had an injury that would limit him to pasture time only and with my limited riding skills I couldn’t imagine starting a new relationship with a younger horse. My experience with Ditto and Poco seemed to be taking me to the next logical step in my life with horses: caring for horses who were desperate for care. When I proposed this to my husband Scott, I expected “the look.” My love of my horses had drained our coffers for years. But instead I got not only his verbal support, but his financial generosity, and actual hands on help when horse care is physically challenging.

For example, when Snitch developed a nasty canker in his foot, my farrier and vet developed a treatment which involved screwing a metal plate onto Snitch’s foot to keep the foot clean and allow the medicine, packed into the hoof, to remain there.

Snitch is a horse that never stands still. He has danced through his life and that includes when he’s in the cross ties for grooming, a hoof trim or any other reason. He dances. Getting the medicine stuffed in his hoof changed daily and removing and then re-screwing the metal plate was an incredible challenge. I did it once or twice by myself, and when I was done wondered how I actually had done it! But Scott rose to the challenge, asked me nicely to just go elsewhere (I can get a little “instructive” [bossy?] when it comes to my kids and my animals) and said he would take care of it …and he did. And he did it numerous times without losing patience with the “moving target” and without complaint. And that’s just one example of his helpfulness.

There was the time Scott’s brand new shoes became covered with blood while he helped out with Poco (no one, horse or human, was seriously hurt) but I’ll save that tale for later.

Though in our earlier years together I didn’t think of Scott as an “animal person,” he has always been kind and attentive to every creature I have brought into our life, and there have been many.  And now with my dream of  Sky Ranch, he not only has encouraged me and supported me with words, but has generously helped get us off the ground and set up to provide the best possible care for these horses.

We have the horses’ backs and Scott has ours.