Ditto was my first horse. I bought him from a training/riding facility in Los Angeles when I was 42 years old. A long wait for someone who has loved horses since she could put together the sentence: “I want a horse.” No opportunity presented itself for me to have a horse or even take riding lessons when I was a child, though I did get to occasionally sit on my grandparents’ working draft horses while they chomped hay in the barn.

My daughter Jenny was born when I was 39 years old. A “high risk” birth that culminated in a diagnosis of possible severe developmental disability. This was devastation and fear of the future such as I had never known. I couldn’t get my bearings, and I decided to take horse back riding lessons as therapy for me in between the numerous therapy appointments for my daughter. I signed on at a local hunter jumper training barn, and a new chapter of my love of horses began.

I nervously trotted through my lessons on wonderful “school horses” (most of whom should be awarded medals of valor for what they put up with from unskilled and often misinformed students) and a year or so later one of the Thoroughbreds owned by the training stable was up for sale.  My trainer suggested I buy him. Though Ditto was far better trained and experienced than I was, we had a great initial ride together, and I think it was love at first canter!

I bought Ditto and the new chapter began. Ditto was a high strung, delicately built Thoroughbred with a kind but skittish disposition. I’m a bit skittish myself so we were a perfect match emotionally if not so perfect for performance! People would comment: “Why not choose a  calm, more seasoned Quarter Horse? Wouldn’t that better suit you and help you get over some of your riding anxieties?” I ignored this advice as I was too much in love with this spirited horse, who sometimes was downright silly with his worries….as am I.

So….Jenny’s birth and horses: I often cried about Jenny. Wondering about her future, who would protect her when I was no longer here? How would she be received in the world? What could I do to give her a life? And it seemed a lot of this crying would occur in the car on the way home from my riding lessons or while just visiting Ditto and the other horses in the barn. What was that about? I asked a wise person and she told me: “It’s because horses and Jenny are both about your heart.”

I think for many of us who are “into” horses, it is about our hearts. Many animals are beautiful. But for us there is something so big and yet so delicately ephemeral about these creatures who challenge and enchant us simultaneously. There’s just no explaining it to those who don’t “have the bug.”  A mother, who was at the training barn while her 11 year old daughter took riding lessons, told me she asked her daughter to explain the attraction to horses: her daughter replied, sticking her nose in her horses’ neck: “I just love the way they smell.” Maybe that’s it. It clearly defies definition or explanation. My daughter and my horses bring me much joy, but as with all things of the heart, they can also make me cry. They live large in my heart.

California is my home and I wouldn’t have it any other way… but these fires…  of course the loss of human life and the destruction of homes is more than tragic, but when you love the other creatures of the earth it gets really scary.

We don’t have a horse trailer (though hope in time to have one) and though we have a friendly connection to H. E. E. T. (Horse Evacuation Team/ a wonderful, skillful group of volunteers who help get horses out of all sorts of difficulties..natural disasters, traffic accident, swimming pools, you name it) it is a little nerve wracking when there are fires within 30 miles of a horse barn.

Though the fire danger is ever present each year, the drought has made us ever more mindful of how fires, either created by natural phenomenon, mindless human action or worse yet, deliberate dastardly acts, can pose a great threat. Many years ago when I lived in Santa Monica there were great fires nearby that sent soot and ash drifting into our usually clear ocean air. On the TV news, I saw footage of a coyote facing burning brush on the hillside by the 405 Freeway, clearly trying to figure out which way to run. I can’t forget that image and only hope s/he found a safe way out. Fingers crossed that the fall/winter rains are not long in coming.

Home means different things to different people..horses…and frogs…well at least one frog.

For me, home is where my family, critters, and routines reside. My hope for the horses is that home now means a safe place where they have the food, pasture time and kind attention they need. Then there’s the frog.

There is a tiny little white frog who lives in the lower pasture water tank. I feel a little stab of guilt at my insensitivity when he comes swooshing out of the tank when I tip it to get the old water out. Because of his pale color I don’t see him till it’s too late, and I’ve upended his world. Spilled from the tank he hops off slowly but not till looking at me (at least he appears to be looking at me) with his dark brown eyes as if to say: “Pardon me?! Someone is living in here.”

I’m never sure how he returns to the tank. He must climb the polystyrene walls with his sticky feet. But the next time I change the water, he’s in there again and distracted me forgets to look out for him. I don’t want to attribute human thinking to him, but he is willing to come back to the tank even though he was rather abruptly forced out of it. Even in difficult circumstances, home has a pull to it. Sky Ranch Sanctuary provides a home for horses and at least one white frog.

Because of the unique nature of horse ownership, there are no accurate figures to document how many unwanted horses exist. Unlike as to dogs and cats, many state laws regarding the abuse and/or abandonment of horses treat horses as “livestock” rather than pets, allowing for much greater leeway in their treatment. Also it is safe to say that tens of thousands of horses are sent to slaughter each year, while some unwanted horses are euthanized. With economic downturns, the number of abandoned or neglected horses rises exponentially.

Sky Ranch Sanctuary currently houses and cares for four horses and we are hoping to expand to care for a total of six. (We want to keep the size manageable for myself and Madeline Royal [horse caregiver extraordinaire] to do the day to day care and maintenance.)

At times I think this is such a drop in the bucket that it seems an exercise in futility. We’re so small. But then I look at the horses we have and remind myself that to Sheldon, Spirit, Party Girl and Snitch, our small haven is everything. They are wanted horses given the care and attention all horses deserve. And that is something that matters.