We were grooming Sangria in her stall at Teri Hall’s barn at her property a few miles outside of ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä. This was on my first morning at Teri’s place. She was teaching me about basic care for horses. I was trying not to get too much in the way while I just enjoyed being around a horse.
It really made me feel like a kid, but this was work.
Teri was showing me how to use special gloves to loosen up the dirt clinging to a horse’s skin.
“You can go right down to the bony areas on the legs with those gloves,†she said. “That’s where they get bug bit.â€
And horses have a hard time scratching –no fingers or thumbs.
Teri told me that this kind of care was important and not just for keeping the horse clean.
“It’s also a kind of bonding,†Teri said.
Horses need people and for centuries, people needed horses. They were our farming engines and means of travel for so long in our history, but we don’t rely on them like we did. Farming with horses is still done, but not to the same scale as it was 100 or 200 years ago.
Few still use horses as a primary means of travel -- the Amish and maybe a couple of hipsters in Brooklyn.
Largely, we keep horses as pets, but having horses requires a lot more work and responsibility than having a goldfish or a dog, and not everyone can handle it.
Teri’s horses, Sangria and Margarita, were rescued through Heart of Phoenix Equine Rescue. Teri didn’t say much about Sangria’s previous owners, just told me about how she’d been found.
“She was tied to a trampoline with no food and no water,†Teri told me. “There was a horse, dead and under a tarp next to her.â€
That was probably Margarita’s father.
Teri didn’t say whether she knew how the horse under the tarp died, but Sangria was starving. Nobody knew she was pregnant until she started getting enough to eat.
“The weight all went to her belly,†Teri said.
A veterinarian did an ultrasound and discovered Margarita, who was born early, small and a little fragile.
They both had a good home now. Teri’s been a volunteer and fostered horses through Heart of Phoenix for years. The group was started about 15 years ago by Tinia Creamer.
Tinia grew up a “horse girl†in Lincoln County. She fell out of raising and riding horses after she moved away but came back to it after a tragic fire claimed members of her family. Equine rescue became kind of a hobby and then an all-consuming part of her life after she discovered there were a lot of horses in crisis and not a lot of help for them.
After plans for the weekend had sort of fallen through, I called Tinia and talked to her about equine rescue in West Virginia, which seemed weird. West Virginia doesn’t seem like a state with a big horse culture.
It’s the kind of state where if you’re driving around and you see a horse or two standing in a field, you might announce to the rest of the car or no one in particular, “horse.â€
At least, I do that.
Tinia didn’t disagree with me. West Virginia has farms and even horse farms. People ride here, but it’s not like Kentucky or Texas where horse culture is more ingrained.
However, it could be argued that West Virginia, along with Kentucky, Texas and a whole bunch of other states have a horse problem.
Tinia said, “We’re probably best known for our work with feral horses.â€
Yes, that’s a thing, apparently.
Trinia said there are hundreds of feral horses around the state, which is an improvement. There used to be thousands.
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“But that was back when the market for horses had really just evaporated,†she said. “There were people out there willing to give you a horse for free.â€
The market has improved, which means there are fewer horses being abandoned.
Horses, Tinia explained, aren’t wild. They’ve been a companion species for mankind for millennia, like dogs, like cats.
And perhaps more than dogs or cats, horses need people.
Horses are thoroughly domesticated, and while they can manage to live out in the wild, there is no reverting back to whatever wild stock they originally came from.
Feral horses can survive in the mountains. They can even thrive, but it’s not going to last.
Trinia said horses usually end up in the wild after a horse owner runs into trouble with managing a horse.
“It will be too much for them,†she said. “It can be an economic problem. They can’t afford to care for them or it could be that they don’t know how to handle the horse.â€
Maybe someone can't control or doesn’t get along with the horse. Rather than seeking training for the horse, training for themselves or both, they’ll give up and turn the horse out somewhere.
A popular place to dump unwanted animals has been reclaimed surface mining sites.
“These are places where the soil has been removed,†she said. “What grows there usually isn’t too nutritious.â€
Still, horses can sometimes manage to do OK on the land -- at least, through the summer, but as it gets colder and the edible vegetation disappears, the horses go hungry. Some of them starve to death in the cold.
“I’ve seen some horrific things,†Tinia said.
Still, feral horses can survive in the wild, form herds and even breed with other feral horses. Viewing these animals has become a tourist attraction in some parts of the region, which Tinia called misguided.
Feral horses aren’t safe. Ungelded, untrained stallions are aggressive and potentially violent.
Heart of Phoenix takes in some of these horses with the hopes of rehabilitating them. They bring them to their compound in Lesage, West Virginia, where the animals are assessed. They figure out what the horses need and whether they can be trained and conditioned to be around people.
Heart of Phoenix does take in other horses, but Tinia said they’re selective. Animals move in and out of their facility all the time, but they still only have so much space.
Often, horses come to them injured, ill or just too weak. Veterinarians euthanize these horses and Heart of Phoenix disposes of the remains.
None of this is easy or cheap. As a non-profit organization, money is always something they worry about, but Tinia said they rely on volunteers who work for nothing or next to nothing.
“You don’t even have to be a horse person,†she said. “It’s whatever you can do. Like, if you can edit video, that kind of thing helps us, too.â€
But yes, donations are always appreciated.
Tinia said they get by on small donations from an army of supporters and the occasional grant.
“What’s hardest for us is we’re like a lot of other non-profit organizations,†she said. “We’re all trying to raise funds to do the things we think we need to do, but there are a lot of organizations out there trying to do the same thing –raise funds for their missions.â€
It’s a lot of work and effort, but they’ve been fortunate, so far.
People like horses.
