Refuge Farms (www.refugefarms.org)

Just when I needed them, they appeared! - Sandy Gilbert, Refuge Farms, and a special horse named Joseph.

In the fall of 2003, I was in turmoil: my marriage of 20+ years was coming apart, my children were growing and beginning to leave the nest, and I was terribly depressed. I knew I needed to make big changes, but how? I didn't even have a job. I was looking for some sign that, in middle age, my life still held promise and possibility. But I couldn't imagine how.

Instinctively, I dug deep within myself to remember the time in my life when I'd felt most peaceful, most optimistic, most strong - and that was when I was ages 10-12, with my very own horse, Chiquita.


I lived in paradise then. My dad was a career Air Force officer, stationed in Puerto Rico for those three years. In our backyard we had a coconut palm, a banana tree, and vines of purple bougainvillea flowers. Our "fence" was a hibiscus hedge. My 10th birthday party - in late November, mind you - was an outdoor swimming party!

But my 10th birthday was most special for a much more important reason. My father had noticed that I was in love with horses. Who couldn't have noticed? I read every book about horses I that I could get my hands on: the Marguerite Henry books, like King of the Wind and Misty of Chincoteague, and the Black Stallion books, and Black Beauty. I drew horses on every available flat surface. I spent what money I had on plastic models of horses. And I thought that was the closest I'd ever get to a real live horse.

I was amazed beyond belief when my parents announced that for my birthday I was getting a real horse! Dreams did come true, after all! This was the great good fortune of living on an air base in Puerto Rico. Keeping a horse was easy, inexpensive and popular. The base riding club maintained six pastures around which to rotate the horses. Barns and stalls were nearly unheard of, and grain was only purchased as a once-a-week supplement.


Chiquita was a fine-boned sorrel mare with a frizzy mane and a crooked white blaze. (She looked a bit like our Blaise at Refuge Farms.) She was too thin - her ribs showed, and her spine and hip bones jutted out. She was afraid of men - strictly a ladies' horse, we were told. She was 14 years old and considered an "older" horse. Who knows what her previous life had been like? I was eager to love and pamper her.

Like many of the horses in Puerto Rico, Chiquita was a Paso Fino. These were descendents of horses brought by the Spanish - a smaller, more delicate-looking horse known for its special "paso fino" gait - it's a "gear" just above a trot, where the legs move quickly, and it is so smooth that, ideally, a rider can hold a glass filled to the brim without spilling a drop.


I learned that not only did Chiquita have a beautiful paso fino gait - she loved to run, and those light bones made her fast. Behind her quiet demeanor lay a strong competitive streak. So as my confidence and riding ability grew, Chiquita and I started entering the kids' events in horse shows. We began racking up ribbons and trophies. Chiquita was an especially expert barrel racer. Now, this is where I first experienced The Magic. Chiquita and I were One - we were of like minds, and we wanted to win!

But horse shows were only part of it. As we bonded, and Chiquita relaxed, she gained weight. Her hip bones disappeared, a layer of fat covered her spine, and I could ride bareback, which I often did, sometimes in shorts and sneakers. We spent lots of time exploring the grounds around the riding club and going on trail rides with friends.

And amazingly, my dad -- a city boy, through and through -- bought a horse of his own, just so that he could ride with me. He found a sweet and ancient buckskin gelding named Cinnamon. On the rare occasion they actually hit the trail, they'd proceed at a very laid-back pace, Cinnamon's head swaying back and forth as my dad whistled tunes. My father's joke was, "Cinnamon and I are a perfect pair. I don't like to ride, and he doesn't like to be ridden."


Chiquita and I had a wonderful couple of years. I was proud that we won those ribbons and proud that I knew how to take care of an animal that weighed 10 times what I did. Those memories and feelings settled into my core and would never leave me.

As I approached age 12, our three years in Puerto Rico were coming to an end, and I knew we would have to sell Chiquita to another family. I think I subconsciously prepared myself for the inevitable good-bye by detaching. I'd started junior high and threw myself into pre-teenhood. My weekend social scene moved from "going out to the horses" to evenings at the roller-skating rink with friends and wondering which boy would ask me to skate in the "flashlight dance."

Then we moved Stateside - to Colorado - which I found brutally freezing. Horses and Puerto Rico faded far into the past as I progressed through the decades: adolescence, then adulthood and all its responsibilities, parenthood, and a move to the cold, cold Upper Midwest.

But I never completely forgot horses. When I'd see them in a pasture, or in some quaint part of a city pulling buggies of tourists, my heart leaped out to them. Horses were old friends, and my love for them - especially for Chiquita - ran deep, like an underground stream. But I always thought they'd be strictly a memory, like an old framed picture.

Then there I was in 2003, wondering what to make of my life that - other than having borne and raised my three wonderful children - had seemed to go off course.

Then came the movie "Seabiscuit," which profoundly affected me. I started seriously wondering if there were any way I could touch a horse again. There was no way I was equipped to own one - that was for sure.

I didn't care if I rode again. I really just wanted to brush a horse, to touch it and breathe in that old familiar horse smell. As I drifted to sleep at night, I'd mentally put myself through the paces of grooming a horse to see if I remembered how. I'd feel the curry comb in my hand, run it in circles to kick up the matted dust, then brush the hair flat. I'd comb the tangles out of Chiquita's mane, starting gently from the bottom so as not to pull. From beneath her mane, I'd pull off fat ticks (yes, Sandy and Kathy, I really used to do that!!) I'd get the hoof pick, lean against Chiquita's leg - her signal to raise the hoof - and I'd carefully pick out the caked mud.

I grabbed the Yellow Pages™, looking under "Stables," contemplating whether I dared call one of these places to ask, "Hey, can I come brush your horses?"

But before I got a chance to do that, a story appeared in the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, about an upcoming "Open Barn" at a place called Refuge Farms, a place of peace and healing for both horses and humans. So in September 2003, full of curiosity and anticipation, I headed out to THE FARM for the first time.

I arrived just as the program was beginning, and was quickly mesmerized by the stories Sandy told about the featured horses. She told about big blind gentle DukeDuke, rescued when Sandy outbid the kill buyer by $1. But what truly stuck with me was the story of Frances Andrew and Diane. When Sandy talked about "The Magic," I knew exactly what she meant because that was what I had experienced with Chiquita.

Sandy understood! All I'd dared hope for was a place where I could brush horses, and here I'd stumbled upon just what I'd really needed but didn't know existed!

I came to THE FARM for the first time as a potential volunteer on a blustery April day in 2004. I hadn't learned how windy it is on that hill, and I was underdressed for the cold. As I left my car and walked toward the Cleary barn, Sandy came dashing over to greet me: "Are you warm enough?" were her first words.

"No," I answered, truthfully. "I'll get you something," she said, heading back to the house and returning with a green hooded sweatshirt.

I walked through the pasture, where other visitors were tromping through, meeting horses. Then we went into the barn to brush horses. She taught us how to brush the horses, and taught us the signs that show that a horse is relaxed: a back hoof poised on "tiptoe," drooping eyelids, and smacking lips. Everyone else, it seemed, had a horse except for me. Where was "The Magic" Sandy had talked about? Was I going to be the exception to the rule?


Then Sandy said with a smile, "Do you think you'd be comfortable with this guy?" pointing to the blond Belgian horse she'd just brought in. "Sure!" I said, happy to be matched up. "Barbara, meet Joseph. Joseph, meet Barbara," she said, laughing.

Joseph! Of course! Something clicked. My father's name was Joseph - my father who'd bought me my first horse. He had died in 2001, and I missed him terribly, now that I needed his strength. My father, who, with his warmth and humor, had been like sunshine - and also like a fortress, for how he protected me. My middle name is Jo, for him.

I brushed and brushed Joseph, and the caked dirt flew, as did his winter coat, which lay around his hooves like a carpet. He turned his head a few times to look back at me, curious. But then I saw the back hoof go up, the lips smack, and the eyes droop. I tried to give him a kiss, but at that, his head jerked up, his eyes startled. Joseph, I learned, was not that kind of a horse. I would need to approach him patiently and respectfully, at his pace.

Sandy told me that when Joseph arrived, two years previously, he was a very angry horse. "He was rejected," she said, "and he knows it." She said that after all this time, there was still one of the 3 Promises that he did not believe. He was hard to get to know, and not one to trust.

It's a good thing I didn't know that when I'd started brushing him - I'd have been nervous! I left THE FARM that day feeling great, with the green sweatshirt covered with horsehair. "I feel like a horse!" I said to Sandy as we embraced goodbye. "You smell like one, too!" she added, laughing.

I came to THE FARM several times that summer to visit the horses and brush Joseph. I thought I would have a leisurely long while to get to know him. But he got very sick just a few months later - that July.

He had days of not being able to keep his food in, days of diarrhea, days of losing weight, and growing weakness. I helped Sandy bathe his tail and back legs with warm sudsy water.

Joseph grew weaker and his organs began failing, and Sandy knew it was time to help him cross. The few days before the vet was scheduled to arrive, she invited me to visit anytime, apprising me of what to expect, when. On a heartbreakingly beautiful July morning, I arrived at THE FARM to say goodbye- but too late, I had thought.


I cautiously made my way to the barn and thankfully found Sandy embracing Joseph, who stood calmly, wearing a light blanket she'd lovingly put on his back. The vet was unexplainably late. But we had that reprieve, that precious hour, to appreciate Joseph, and he was still magnificent. He had a beautiful head with a white blaze. He stood over the stock tank, drank, and held his head high, his ears alert to the sounds around him.

Finally I said goodbye. Sandy says he watched me all the way back to my car.

I came back to THE FARM two weeks later, feeling lost. There was no Joseph, but I would help with general chores. As I walked toward the barn, Sandy skipped down the path to meet me, a big smile on her face. "We found the very best use of your money!" she said, referring to a donation I'd made in Joseph's memory. I couldn't imagine what that could be!


She led me to the corral. "Meet Josephina!" she said, pointing to a beautiful blond Belgian mare - the image of her namesake. And (gasp!) a dark little FOAL at her flank! A baby!!

Sandy had gone to auction a few days after Joseph's crossing, and at the very end of the auction, out trotted this Joseph look-alike - a PMU mare taken off the line, as it turned out - followed by the dark little bonus, glued to her flank. She'd paid $300 for the pair of them, not knowing how she'd pay for it. The auctioneer took her word. As it turned out, my Joseph money arrived just when she needed a down-payment.

"What will we do?" Sandy exclaimed. "I have no idea how to take care of a foal. We've never had one before!"


That spindly little foal, who fit right under my arm, grew into beautiful Babee Joy - THE FARM's first baby. And so began the New Generation at Refuge Farms, as she was soon followed by Unit and Jeri-Ann.

So there are new beginnings, new lives, and dreams come true - and they are inextricably tied in with that most loyal and true of creatures, the horse!

Barbara