The story of a horse rescuer
A
horse needs Susan Pohlman's help.
Opening a metal pasture gate, Susan Pohlman
walks across uneven, frozen mud toward a chestnut horse lying
on its side, limbs taut.
She meets up with her husband, Tom, and the two try their best
to get the downed horse, named R.C., to stand.
“Come on pumpkin, come on bud,” Susan says,
pushing against R.C.'s back.
“Come on, let's get your feet up,” she said, lifting
up the 2-year-old horse's legs
Finally, after continued encouragement from the Pohlmans, R.C.
gets up onto his feet.
“There you go, that's my boy,” Tom Pohlman tells
him before leading the horse back to a barn on the couple's 160-acre
property south of Roseburg.
It's just another day in the life of a horse rescuer.
“Some people say, ‘What are you doing tomorrow?'
I say I never know until the sun comes up,” Pohlman remarks
as she leaves the pasture.
Taking care of horses like R.C., who was relinquished by owners
who had fallen on hard times, has been a part of Pohlman's daily
life for more than 20 years. She and her husband run the nonprofit
Whispering Winds Equine Rescue, where 63 rescued horses make
themselves at home.
Pohlman said she rescued her first horse in 1988. She was able
to expand her horse rescue operation about a year ago when the
Pohlmans moved to Roseburg from Portland, where they only had
two acres of property.
Along with horses whose former owners could no longer afford
them - a number that is increasing due to the economy,
Pohlman said - the horse rescue facility also takes in
horses with special needs. The Pohlmans also find room for wild
horses that would otherwise be taken out of the country to be
slaughtered.
According to the Humane Society of the United States Web site,
tens of thousands of horses are transported to Mexico and Canada
for slaughter each year, now that U.S. horse slaughter plants
are closed.
The horses at Whispering Winds mostly come from Oregon, Washington,
Nevada, and Utah.
Several herds of wild horses roam 140 acres on the Pohlmans'
property. These include horses gathered off Bureau of Land Management
lands and ones that came from the Paiute Indian Reservation and
Sheldon National Wildlife Range in Nevada, Pohlman said.
Horses aren't the only animals to seek refuge with the Pohlmans.
Susan Pohlman said she's also taken in dogs, cats, llamas and
cows.
Funded mostly by donations, Whispering Winds recently received
several grants, including one from the American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to buy hay for the winter.
Pohlman said she always appreciates help from volunteers to help
with grooming and other tasks. Otherwise, Whispering Winds work
is done by Pohlman and her husband, who recently retired.
One of the most spoiled horses on the place is also the youngest,
8-month old Carson. Carson was orphaned after his mother rejected
him at birth. Pohlman and her husband bottle-fed and nursed him
back to health in their tack room. Now the horse follows her
around like a puppy.
“He came in the house once, took all the stuff of the coffee
table, then came into the kitchen to see what I was doing,” Pohlman
said.
Carson is part of another group of horses from Nevada that Whispering
Winds rescued about a year ago. The 33 horses that were part
of a fertility drug study done in an effort to control wild horse
populations. Of the 33 horses, 10 were foals and the rest were
mares, some of them pregnant.
Two of the mares have since died, three foals were aborted, one
was stillborn and another only survived a week, Pohlman said.
She attributes the deaths to adverse effects of the drugs.
Pohlman said she believes the drugs passed some sort of toxin
into Carson's blood stream that made his mother reject him and
all the other mares try to kill him.
Regardless of what caused the horses' medical problems, Pohlman
said she just cares for them as best she can.
Horses roam freely around Pohlman as she gives a tour of the
ranch, which was a former dairy farm. Carson isn't ever far behind,
of course. At one point he butts his way in and Pohlman scolds
him playfully.
“You are just a monster,” she said before planting
a big kiss on his head.
A white and gray horse saunters past. At 31, Sir is Whispering
Winds' oldest horse, Pohlman said. She said she took him in after
Sir's owner was murdered.
“I said, ‘Sure.' How can I say no?”
