Today leaves me very sad in a way.
We have two very neglected horses coming in. Yes, they are just one on top of another this year. So many, they blend in for many of you, I know.
Every year, really, but this year more than ever because we’ve become large enough to hold so many. . .over 35, actually.
I think I’ve never felt more like we have crossed a line here into showing too much for people to internalize and not begin to feel numb.
That is a dangerous place for a non profit to be, honestly.
Creating a numbness to abuse and neglect that isn’t helpful.
Is that terrible to say? Terrible to fear?
Perhaps I worry to much on this, but it is something always there in the back of my mind when I share new intakes and see less of a response than the last herd received. . .
I never want us to show you so much, the impact of what has happened to ONE SINGLE horse doesn’t move you deeply.
That, for me, would be failure.
If we make the cause matter for a certain length of time, but gradually, the magnitude of what is shown to you causes you to begin to not connect with each individual journey in a moving way, I fear eventually, like one starts to feel if they live in a city with a tremendous homeless population, you cease to think much of it.
Compassion fatigue.
As a rescuer in this for what feel like has been (but hasn’t been) forever, I know how real it is.
I want to remind everyone, and MYSELF and our team, each horse is unique.
The skeletal body can look the same, but they are unique. They have their own intelligence, personalities, journeys and will rehab at their own speeds. They will move on in different ways, remember yesterday at different rates. Some will get adopted in months, some will live their final hours with us because they came too late, some will wait years to find a home.
To give each horse justice in their story and to make sure you, as a supporter and page follow, never lose sight of THAT tragic, unique story full of neglect and a happily ever after for one after another matters a great deal to me.
Let me tell you. . .while I struggle with emotional reaction in most everything, I remember the stories of every single horse that has come through our trailers, barns and lives in great detail. I fear the day, when those 240 or so becomes 500, and I forget.
But connecting to each story is what will keep you and I concerned and working toward making equine welfare better each year, and that is how we will eventually stop seeing emaciated shadows of horses come through here week after week, friends.
If you like what we do, share and consider funding the most recent intakes onto their afters.
(The filly isn’t with us, she is with a foster Brittany of Preston County’s Animal control located. We will cover her vetting, though, to get her what she urgently needs)
