Good for the Soul

A week ago today, I sat out on my porch watching an enormous cloud of smoke engulf the skies above Denver. The news reported that evening that a controlled burn that had gotten out of control in Conifer, Colorado. There was a home video that quickly went viral as a father drove his children out of the fire, flames flickering off the windshield. By the next morning, the fire had made national news. 

Conifer is a quaint little mountain town nestled in the foothills of Colorado. Heavily wooded, most of the properties are zoned for livestock. As the residential areas were evacuated, homeowners desperately tried to also evacuate their animals. The Jefferson County Horse Council (JCHC) sprang into action at the first news of the fire. Volunteers began rescuing livestock and other animals by the trailer full to the Jefferson County Fairgrounds in Golden. 

A childhood friend, and long time volunteer for the JCHC, later told me that large trailers would arrive Monday night packed with horses and other animals. There weren't even enough handlers to hold all of the animals and some volunteers had to hold on to two or three frightened horses until others could come and assist them in taking the animals to a stall. As soon as the last animal stepped of the trailer, the driver would close the door and race right back up the mountain to rescue another load. There were so many animals evacuated in the first 24 hours. 

Many homeowners only had ten minutes to evacuate before it was too late. What would you grab if you only had ten minutes? By the time you use precious minutes to grab important documents and belongings, would you have enough time to hook up your horse trailer, catch your animals and load them in the trailer to evacuate. Most likely - not.

I am an animal lover.

I can only imagine what internal turmoil this owner must have felt as he/she used a last precious minute to grab a permanent marker and write their phone number on the hip of this young colt before turning him loose and praying he made it out alive - because they didn't have enough time to trailer him out. Or maybe they didn't even have a trailer...

Some one did find him...

...with a large gaping shoulder wound. Rescuers were able to catch him and get him evacuated. 

 

JCHC was in need of volunteers to help with the day to day necessities of housing all of these evacuated animals. So I rallied up some troops and headed out to help where ever I was needed on Friday morning. 

We got our assignments, name tags and off we went to do some chores. 

I put my mom to work with a pitch fork and wheel barrel.

The JCHC ran quite the operation. Each horse had a stall card that volunteers recorded the time of each feeding, each cleaning and tracked water and feed consumption.

There were 225 animals Friday morning that all needed fed, watered and their stalls cleaned. Over 100 of the animals were horses. 

There were goats, lamas, alpacas and even a couple of yaks.

I had never been up close to a yak before.

I thought these alpacas looked like shaved poodles.

Or maybe a lion?

We were pretty much placed on horse detail. Although, I did get to help wrangle a pigmy goat!

There were horses of every breed, shape and size.

Gigantor here was a Appaloosa/draft cross of some sort. He was super friendly but completely overwhelmed the tiny stall he was in. 

And then there was this little cutie-pa-tootie!

I wanted to scoop her up and take her home for the kids. Our Brown Eyed Girl would probably try to convince us to let her sleep inside.

I wanted to curl up with her in my lap and scratch her all over.

Fellow AHA friend Julie and a cute little Arabian.

I am pretty sure I scratched every horse I came in contact with. I took just a minute to whisper something in baby talk and give them a good pat on the shoulder.

I made a lot of new four-legged friends. 

I felt good doing something for someone/something else. Even if it was JUST feeding and cleaning stalls.

And then there was this big handsome boy and his neighbor.

There were several small drawings decorating their stalls. The artistic talents of very young children.

His little owner had drawn a picture of his/her beloved four-legged friend.

On both drawings, mom or dad wrote, "Thank you for taking care of my horse."

This really put my day into perspective. 

My heart was so happy for the opportunity to take care of these young kids' horses - even if all I did was give them some hay and muck out their stalls. I helped these families and fellow horse owners. Relieved them of one more thing to worry about as they wondered if they would even have a home to return to.