Indiana Horse Rescue

Volunteer Stories: "Dean's Intensity"

Allow me a moment to introduce this new series of stories; the events under the Volunteer Stories heading will be from the time I spent volunteering for Indiana Horse Rescue. Fear not those who grew fond of the trucker stories, I still have tons of those to tell. However, it is with a sad and heavy yet content heart that I feel the desire to share some of my rescue experiences here and now.

Recently, I was informed that a horse I adopted in 2002 (or so. not gonna dig up the paperwork.) has passed on. I recalled the discussion I had with Tony, the farm manager and head of the rescue organization, when I first let my co-workers and fellow volunteers know that I wanted to adopt this Saddlebred.
He had said to me, "Jamie, don't get too attached to him. You know he could drop dead tomorrow..."
To which I replied 'Any one of them out there could die tomorrow, that doesn't mean this one doesn't deserve any less love today.'
"Well you know he's not broke to ride..."
'Yeah, Tony, I know. This horse doesn't have to carry me, I'll never ask him to jump through hoops for me, I won't ask of him anything more that what he's already giving me of his own will.'



Two weeks before that discussion with Tony, I was sitting at a board meeting where we were determining the intake order of the horses in need of the services the Rescue offered. The facility had shelter space available for 3 new horses in addition to the 27 that were in the barns already, and a waiting list of 9 or 10 horses. As any experienced rescue could tell you, you HAVE to know the limitations of your resources because you CAN'T save them all. You do what you can with what you have and KNOW that what you've done matters to the ones you've touched. So, I'm sitting at the board table with the intake requests for 3 horses, and of them, I advocated strongly for one: a 10 or 11 year old Saddlebred. The owner died 3 years previously and the widow wanted nothing to do with this horse. To her, he was a burden, and she wanted him gone. She tried to sell this broke-to-drive horse in an area where pleasure riding is king for $3000, and found no buyers. She lowered her asking price to $1500 and still no buyers. She tried to get $1000 and got nothing. Now desperate to be rid of her "burden", she spoke with a neighbor of hers that happened to be her deceased husband's farrier, and who also happened to be the family that fed her "burden" over the fence when she decided she no longer cared if that horse in her yard had food in his belly. She had approached him about glue factories or auctions that would take this horse off her hands. He, being aware of this horse's physical condition and the nature of certain auctions in the state of Indiana, did not wish to see this horse go off to a Kill Sale. The farrier suggested to the woman that she consider donating this horse to Indiana Horse Rescue because they would find him a place where he could have a purpose. At first the woman didn't want to because it meant she'd be paying a $100 donation to the rescue to take care of his immediate needs (vaccinations, deworming, etc), until the farrier suggested it would be a fantastic way to honor her husband's memory by doing right by his horse. She agreed to donate the horse, and I was the one advocating to the board of directors on this Saddlebred's behalf. And the board agreed that this Saddlebred, known at the time of intake as "Dustin", was in serious danger of going to a Kill Sale. The owner was desperate, the winter was harsh, and the only food this horse was getting was what the farrier's family threw over the fence for him.

The following week, I was the lone volunteer on staff that was available to take this horse in when the farrier scheduled his drop-off. I was a little anxious. This would be the first horse I did the full intake paperwork on, and this would be the first Saddlebred I ever encountered. My familiarity was with Standardbreds, with some knowledge of Thoroughbreds, Arabians, Draft Horses, Quarter Horses and ponies/minis. I didn't have the first clue of certain Saddlebred breed characteristics...

The farrier's truck rolled down the driveway mid-day. I greeted him and he opened his 8 horse slant to reveal a horse way at the front of the trailer. From the back of the trailer, the horse looked average. Then the farrier went to the front to walk him out and I saw immediately that there was nothing average about this horse. They stepped out of the trailer and the farrier handed me the lead. "Dustin" found his land legs and picked his head up: he towered over me so much I had to let my head fall all the way back just to see all of him. I gave him a pat on the neck and asked "Dustin" to stay with me. 'Please. I don't wanna have to explain why there's a rescue horse running down CR 900'. We walked fine until the big scary semi trailer caught his attention and he reared slightly, which in turn brought his head even closer to the overhead power lines, which then in turn made him dance like a 2 year old hot on corn fresh on the track...
'Hey, when you fed him, what were you feeding him?'
"Corn and sweet feed..." the farrier informed me.
Great. He's huge AND wired. We continued this dance all the way to the barn.
Inside, he proved he had ground manners, and the farrier offered to trim his feet while he was there. "Dustin" stood fine for the trim. The farrier finished up and I parked "Dustin" in a stall and tossed him some hay.
Later that afternoon, when another volunteer showed up after classes, I started the actual intake procedure on "Dustin". He was 16.2 H by the stick, roughly 950 lbs by the tape, and according to his teeth, 10 years old. His vitals were all good. He did have a noticeable case of Lordosis (Sway back) and an area of swelling on his left hind leg that did not appear to cause pain or gait deviations. I put him back in his stall, and the other volunteer and I began to clean stalls. As we cleaned stalls, "Dustin" and the Thoroughbred mare next to him, Bridle Baby, were having an equine discussion that ended up with him reaching into her stall and coming out with a mouthful of her mane. Seeing the blood on her neck, I vaulted over the gate of the stall I was in to go separate those two before sutures were needed. As I moved toward their stalls, "Dustin" retreated to the back of his stall and cowered. And I mean eyes wide, tail tucked, body shaking, cowered in the back of his stall. My heart sank immediately and Sara, the other volunteer, and I knew what we were seeing: this horse responded as if he was going to be severely beaten. I asked Sara if I had done something wrong or out of the ordinary, and she said no. Feeling horrible that I had scared "Dustin" so badly, I got in the stall with him and approached slowly.

'Baby boy, I'm sorry I scared you. But you gotta get over this, nobody here will hurt you...'

Sara had suggested that maybe he needed to be "sacked out" to get use to what goes on around this barn. That made sense to me, and I hopped back out of the stall to gather items with which to begin the "sacking": a broom, a rake, a towel, a whip, a crop, and the scariest plastic bag I could find.

I got back into the stall with these items and introduced "Dustin" to each one. I let him sniff the broom on both ends, then backed to the opposite side of the stall and smacked the walls with it. When he showed no adverse reaction to that, I approached him with it. He showed mild apprehension about me coming toward him with the broom, but I kept talking to him and he didn't retreat. He let me brush his legs with it, then his belly, then his back, then let me rub the broom up his neck all the way to his ears (up in the rafters) and back down. I put the broom down and let him accept the fact that no matter how scary the item was in hand, the people here would never let those scary things hurt him. Sara watched as I cycled through the "sack out" items. By the time I got to the towel and plastic bag, "Dustin" was pretty calm about having things thrown at him (towels and bags), touching him (whips, brooms etc) and making noise around and under him (rakes on the stall floor for example).
Little did I know then, that just taking the 10 minutes to show him compassion and understanding for his fears would be the beginning of something bigger.

The following day, I took him out of his stall to let him run off some of that corn/sweet feed energy he had working for him. As we walked out of the barn, the brisk January wind and blowing snow awakened "Dustin's" inner 2 year old: he came out of the barn sideways and on 2 feet. Sara had been watching this from the office door and yelled at me to "HANG ON TO HIM!!", which I did. I had circled him around me once in hopes of getting him to use all 4 of his feet instead of just the hind 2. When I turned to face the office door once more, Sara was there with a camera, snapping a series of pics of me and "Dustin" dancing in the snow. I put him in the round pen and went back into the office to observe him without his awareness of being watched.

Alone in the round pen, "Dustin" screamed for the other horses and began to trot around. His trot was collected, his tail flagged, his head up, neck arched like a swan. He was almost an archetypal horse: if you had never actually seen a horse before, but had heard descriptions of a four-legged beast that embodies strength, spirit, beauty and grace, you would immediately know this was that beast, even though some of his beauty was wrapped up in dreadlocked hair and matted fur. The muted beauty drove me to action in short order; I grabbed some WD-40, a couple brushes and went out to work on him. There was nothing extraordinary about what I did with his mane and tail, but it was the first time I recalled having a horse object to me leaving them alone when I had done as much as I could do for his hair. As I left the round pen, he screamed (not a 'whinny', not a 'nicker', a full on scream...). I continued to walk around the end of the trailer next to the round pen, and "Dustin" continued to scream. I poked my head back around the corner to look at him, and he stopped screaming and his ears went up. I resumed walking away, and he resumed screaming. Little did I know, he was sinking his hooves right into my heart.

The following day, a couple of ladies from downstate came up to look at a 26 year old Quarter Horse, named Rodeo, that was a seasoned roping/penning horse and broke well enough to be considered 'kid-safe'. He was a chestnut gelding, like "Dustin", but that's where the similarities really stopped. When the ladies pulled up in front of the round pen, I was in there with "Dustin" working more of the dreadlocks out of his mane.
"OH!!! He's BEAUTIFUL! Is THAT Rodeo??" they asked.
'No, this is Dustin. Rodeo's in the barn. I'll take you to him here in a second, lemme get this stuff out of here...'
"Well, tell us more about THIS guy. He's absolutely adorable..."
As I began to tell "Dustin's" story, I could see their hearts expanding with immediate love for this horse beside me. And this horse beside me seemed to know they were adoring him as well; he began to nudge me in the back as I spoke to them, then he put his nose over my shoulder and pulled me toward him, as if giving me a hug. The hug melted their hearts and mine. I left the round pen and took them to the barn to see the real Rodeo before this ham in the pen stole their hearts completely. As I introduced them to the real Rodeo, they continued to dote on Dustin. When they worked with Rodeo, they talked about Dustin. When they went back to the office, they had Dustin on the brain...and I was in a panic. I hadn't spoke of adopting a horse since the summer of '01 when I had given serious consideration to a foundered pony named Rowdy. I had passed on adopting Rowdy because 1) I was driving truck cross-country at the time and felt I couldn't give him the time I felt he deserved, 2) he was a pony. While he was on the taller end of the pony scale (and at 5'4" my legs wouldn't have been dragging the ground if I were on him), I was a 240 lb woman at the time that would never ride him because of my size. I felt he would be better left available to a child or family that could learn from him, and perhaps show him in the future when his feet were in better shape. Now that feeling was back. This Saddlebred was working his way into the place where a pony had tread before, and unlike that pony, this horse was full sized and the only real barrier to riding him was the fact that he hadn't been broke to ride. I had quit driving truck that previous November and went on full time volunteer status with the rescue that December. I had buried my dad at the beginning of January and now here at the end of that same month, I was finding myself seriously ready to open my heart to this big chestnut cardiac thief.

As the ladies talked with Tony about "Dustin", Tony reminded them that "Dustin" is NOT broke to ride and that at 10 years old, was still fully capable of throwing a rider into another county if he wanted to. Rodeo, on the other hand, was older, more experienced, safer for novice riders, and generally a lot more stable than that flaky Saddlebred out there in the pen. The ladies, however, did not hear any of that. Their eyes were fixed on the Saddlebred in the pen. Completely out of my control, my heart spoke up.

'If you take him, it will break my heart.'

Tony and Kathryn both looked at me and recognized the significance of my declaration. I had seen many horses come and go, and loved them all because they were horses, but bonded with very few because bonding was for the people that will hopefully give them their 'forever homes'. The ladies seemed to recognize the significance of my statement as well, and decided they may have been thinking impulsively about "Dustin", but couldn't shake the impression he made on them when they first saw him (think 'love at first sight') as well as the truths about him. They decided to think it over about which Rodeo they were going to adopt, the Saddlebred or the Quarter Horse. When they returned to their downstate home, they called to let us know that they wanted the Quarter Horse named Rodeo, that their infatuation with Dustin was impulsive, and they wished me the best of luck with him. I high-tailed it home to Portage to get my checkbook.

As I returned with my checkbook, I thought of a name as I drove and more-so when I returned to the farm. I knew it was taboo to change a horse's name, but "Dustin" didn't seem to fit this horse. To begin with, in the barn, there was already Dusty, a 36 year old grade gelding who had his name far longer than "Dustin" even existed. A phone call to the woman that had donated him yielded no additional information about what "Dustin's" registered name was, and a search of the American Saddlebred Association's registry came up with 2 horses that had "Dustin" in their registered names born around 1991-92, however neither one of them was this horse. One was a palamino horse registered to a farm in Kentucky, the other a bay or brown horse registered in Pennsylvania. So, coming up with Dustin's registered name was met with a dead end. I thought hard about an appropriate name and kept coming back to a quote from a book I had read a few years prior to this that so strongly touched what I, and so many other rescuers, had embodied day to day.

The quote: "It is the purpose for which we exist. This reckless caring." from Dean Koontz's "Intensity."

And "Dustin" became "Dean's Intensity". Or just Dean. He had become that one soul that I felt safe to love, openly, honestly and completely. I had totally broken the taboo rule about renaming horses, but he responded to the name (or my voice, he never did say which). A few months later, the name officially "stuck" when Kathryn came back from an auction where she had seen a Saddlebred up for sale.
"Jamie, you should have seen this mare! She looked JUST like Dean. She had the same star, the white muzzle, same shade of chestnut...but there was something "off" about her. They showed her in hand at the sale, and she went through all the motions and gaits, and it was all good but she didn't have the attitude. It was like she was burnt out on showing, she didn't have Dean's...intensity."

There is more of Dean's story to follow, however I would like to say thank you Tony and Kathryn for doing what you do, and Beth, for giving him a forever home and the life of a king