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Horseytalk.net Special Interview
Burma's Lady

www.stamfordadvocate.com

Burma's LadyShe was rescued from slaughter, survived a near fatal foaling and returned to her owner thanks to Facebook

Meet Burma's Lady In a true tale as dramatic as any movie, this horse was rescued from the brink of slaughter, survived a near fatal foaling, and was reunited though Facebook with the young woman who had owned her and thought she was lost to her forever.

Now the 15-year-old mare named Burma's Lady, who is the elegant granddaughter of champion Seattle Slew, can look forward to a life of love and kindness.

Annette Sullivan, owner of Zoar Ridge Stables in Newtown, is the hero for 29-year-old Megan Chance Adams and Burma.

Seventeen-year-old Megan Chance
stands with her horse, Burma's Lady >>

"I am very lucky. It's an astonishing story," Adams said in an interview from North Carolina, where she will bring Burma to live.

Jockey Jean Cruguet, aboard Seattle Slew"Without the Internet and Facebook, I never would have found her."

Adams was a 17-year-old high school equestrian in New Jersey in 1999 when she bought Burma, an unsuccessful race horse. She took her horse to college and then to her job at the New Jersey stable of Olympian Frank Chapot.

Life as she knew it changed for Burma in the fall of 2005. Adams planned an extended cross-country trip so she contracted with a horsewoman to care for Burma for a year or two in exchange for breeding her and keeping the foal. By the second year, the woman's phone number was disconnected and her business untraceable.

<< Jockey Jean Cruguet, aboard Seattle Slew

After settling in North Carolina, Adams could not find the one horse she had hoped to keep forever. "I assumed something had happened, that my horse had died, and she was too afraid to tell me," Adams said.

Annette Sullivan with Burma's Lady In July 2011, Burma's life was indeed near an end. She was on the sure path to death when horse-rescuer Sullivan was alerted that a horse at an auction of animals destined for slaughter in New Jersey had a connection to trainer Frank Chapot's barn. Sullivan, who also boards horses and gives riding lessons, hoped Burma would be adoptable.

She bought Burma for $200, and another thoroughbred, Anna, for $125, because they were friends. "They were in good shape," Sullivan said, in her Newtown tackroom where photos of a young Burma and Adams were on the bulletin board.

Annette Sullivan with Burma's Lady >>

But soon Sullivan found a horror story of sorts. The two mares had spent at least five years in a testing facility in New Jersey where they were bred over and over by stallions that entered the country and had to be tested for contagious equine metritis. The bacterial infection has no clinical sign in a stallion. So the practice is to require the stallion to breed a mare, and if the mare does not get the disease, the stallion is released from quarantine. Each time, the mare's organs are flushed over and over to ensure they don't get pregnant.

<< Megan Adams & her 4-year-old son, Alex - reunited with her horse, Burmaís Lady. Burma was settling in at Zoar Ridge, but Sullivan soon realized the mare was pregnant, though the test facility insisted it shouldn't have happened. The veteran horsewoman knew this would be life-threatening to Burma because the mare's organs were compromised.

<< Megan Adams & her 4-year-old son, Alex - reunited with her horse, Burmaís Lady. 

As Burma neared her foaling date at the end of October, Sullivan received a surprise -- and tearful -- call from Adams. Another rider had called her and said she thought she recognized Burma on the Zoar Ridge Stables' Facebook page, where barn news is posted.

Adams told Sullivan that Burma was the horse she thought was lost to her and Sullivan shared Burma's lost years, with facts she had pieced together like a detective. But the moment of discovery was clouded. Burma still had to give birth. It would be a fight for her life. Her foal died and she nearly did, too. After two tough days, Burma was on the road to recovery and Adams made plans to bring her home to North Carolina. Burma's salvation was complete.

Sullivan and her husband, Brian, who have two teenage daughters, have placed 11 horses in the past year. A few others still need homes, including Anna. << Megan Adams & her 4-year-old son, Alex - reunited with her horse, Burmaís Lady. "I feel that doing rescues helps balance out the worst part of our industry in some small way," Sullivan said. "There is a part of this world that does an injustice to horses.'' Every rescue horse has a story, she said. "You have to believe there are happy endings,'" Sullivan said. "And Megan -- her circumstances -- it was a fairy tale, wasn't it?"

Megan Adams & her 4-year-old
son, Alex - reunited with her
horse, Burma's Lady >>

Burma's Lady will live on the farm in North Carolina with two horses Adams' father-in-law owns and a pony Adams and her husband, Ryan, bought for their 4-year-old son, Alex. "All these years I was thinking my horse was dead. I never forgot about her. To hear about all the things she went through was unbelievable to me," Adams said. "I hope she'll be happy to be out in the field all day, to get fat and be spoiled and be loved."

Interview sourced from www.stamfordadvocate.com

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