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Acknowledgments 0 Foreword by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas 0 Introduction 0 Part One First Steps -1- A Diamond in the Rough (One) 0 -2- A Diamond in the Rough (Two) 0 -3- Angry Man 0 Contents Blind Horse 2.indd 7 3/6/2007 12:59:22 PM -4- One Cold Bitter Night 0 -5- Boys, I Need Your Help! 0 -6- St. Francis of CAS 0 -7- All in the Family 0 -8- Welcome, Buddy 0 -9- Dino Finds a Friend 0 -10- Buddy's Big Day 0 Part Two The Journey Continues -11- The Doctor Is In 0 -12- Every Day Is Pigs' Day 0 -13- Paulie Comes Home 0 Blind Horse 2.indd 8 3/6/2007 12:59:22 PM -14- Hey, Teach! 0 -15- Lunchtime 0 -16- Paulie the Yogi 0 -17- Road Rage 0 -18- Add Water, Stir With Love 0 -19- Where the Blind Horse Sings 0 -20- 207 Happy Endings 0 -21- Saying Goodbye 0 -22- Welcome to CAS 0 Epilogue: The Journey Continues 0 Bookshelf 0 Join Us! 0 Blind Horse 2.indd 9 3/6/2007 12:59:22 PM Blind Horse 2.indd 10 3/6/2007 12:59:22 PM 11 Acknowledgments I thank my parents, my brother Ned, and my sister Ellen for the magic of my early years-years that led me right back to where I started from. ? Catskill Animal Sanctuary exists because of Jesse Moore. Thank you, JM, for all those wonderful years, and for enduring cow poop and country for as long as you did. ? CAS is a place of, by, and for the community, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the efforts of five tireless heroes-Julie Barone, April Harrison, Lorraine Roscino, Walt Batycki, and Alex Spaey-who bring the best of themselves to this challenging work each and every day. I love and appreciate them more than words can express. The same is true of Gretchen Primack, Jean Rhode, Blind Horse 2.indd 11 3/6/2007 12:59:22 PM 12 Where the Blind Horse Sings and Chris Seeholzer. Who needs a big board of directors when she has three people of such energy, talent, and passion? Thank you to our small army of volunteers-people who have shared time, talents, hearts, and muscles with us, and to the hundreds of community businesses that have shared their products or services so generously. Special thanks to Walter and Charlotte, Joyce, Dee and Paula, Kelly, Pat, Jane, Dick, J.C., Elena, Allen, Cameron, Eileen, Karen, Gary, Kory, Elaine, Betsy, Gus, Jan, Melanie, Frank, Carin, Kirsti, Chris, Cathy, Julie, Bob, and Michelle, and to Jenny on the Spot, the Mid-Hudson Vegetarian Society, Catskill Mountain Coffee, Candle Cafe, MooShoes, Teany, Jivamukti Yoga School, PDQ Printing, and Kiel Equipment. Thanks also to Steve Rucano of Secure Construction and Frank Tiano of Tiano's Excavation for many, many kindnesses. To Jill Spero: thanks for your extraordinary leap of faith, and for your generosity and patience through our infancy. And to my neighbors at the top of the hill: I love you both and am so glad that you can continue to be a part of this place that you and Charlie created. Finally, to those whose smiles, kind words, and gentle touches brighten the lives of animals: keep offering these gifts-they mean more than you know. ? It has been nothing but a pleasure to work with everyone at Skyhorse Publishing, particularly Nick Lyons, Bill Wolfsthal, and the tireless and talented Laura Owen. My deepest gratitude to Skyhorse for giving me a chance to share this story. Blind Horse 2.indd 12 3/6/2007 12:59:22 PM 13 ? In the midst of a wonderful but challenging life, David Cooper is my touchstone. Thank you, David, for your love, patience, and support, and for reminding me to breathe. Thank you, too, for sharing the adventure. ? Finally, to my dear friend Rachel Jacoby: I hope you are as proud as I am grateful. Kathy Stevens March 2007 Blind Horse 2.indd 13 3/6/2007 12:59:22 PM Blind Horse 2.indd 14 3/6/2007 12:59:22 PM 15 When most of us say we love "animals," we believe we are speaking of all animals. In reality, though, we are selective. We certainly love dogs and cats, and may have a special love of horses. Most of us would also include "wild animals." However, we unwittingly have favorites. If asked to name the animals we have in mind, most of us would start with mammals (but probably not rats and mice), and then might mention birds (but perhaps not crows, pigeons, or starlings). Some of us would put in a good word for reptiles, a few of us would include amphibians, and a small minority might name fish, especially tropical, freshwater fish. But except for bees and butterflies (as adults, not as larvae) almost none of us would include insects or other invertebrates. In short, we discriminate. Our love of animals turns out to be lavish affection for relatively few. As for the others, we seldom think about them. Perhaps the most ironic aspect of our discrepancy applies to the birds and mammals that we eat and otherwise use-the farm animals. I spent part of my childhood on a farm and therefore Foreword Blind Horse 2.indd 15 3/6/2007 12:59:22 PM 16 Where the Blind Horse Sings once cultivated a compartmentalized attitude toward farm animals, feeling great affection for the farm dogs and cats, also for the dairy cows and the work horses, but little or no affection for the steers we sometimes raised for beef, or for the pigs, sheep, and chickens. We named the dogs and cats, the cows and the horses, but were forbidden to name the others. Instead, telling ourselves that they had no intelligence or emotions, we killed and ate them. My experience was far from unusual-it is very difficult indeed to eat a slice of ham cooked with honey mustard and decorated with a sprig of parsley, and at the same time also consider the personality of the individual that provided it. This is as true of our population in general as it is of farm families If we eat meat or wear leather, we must compartmentalize. We must erase the knowledge that our food or leather garment is the muscle or skin of a sensitive, intelligent, emotional being. The shrink-wrapped meat that we buy in the supermarket cannot, we feel, have a former identity. Meanwhile, we continue to cherish our pets and donate money for wildlife conservation. Thus Kathy Stevens is of particular interest, as she has seen what most of us seem not to see-the personae of farm animals. She created the Catskill Animal Sanctuary for them, one of very few such sanctuaries in the country. She cogently points out that the meat industry encourages our lack of concern-if we knew who it was we were eating, and what the animal had to suffer, we animal-lovers might feel protective. But most of us would rather not know, and thus we do little to help farm animals. So Kathy has set about to counter our apathy. Part of the mission of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary is to educate the public, hence tours are offered so that visitors can meet the animals they might otherwise Blind Horse 2.indd 16 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM 17 ignore or be eating. And she has written this book to tell their stories. Given her sensitivity to animals, every story is a perfect gem, and all are intensely moving. I found one story of particular interest-the story of Rambo, a sheep so fierce he would "rear up on his hind legs and come full tilt" at whoever was unfortunate enough to have to clean his pen or feed him. When I lived on the farm, sheep seemed to be mindless creatures. We used the expression "silly as a sheep." Back then, Rambo's ferocity would have supported my impression. But later, as a young adult, I met a flock of semi-wild sheep in Scotland. To my surprise, their intelligence and knowledge shone. This was especially true of the leaders, the older sheep, and of a wise old ewe in particular. Thus I realized that the sheep I had previously known were (a) young and inexperienced, (b) leaderless, and (c) captives in a controlled environment. They had no way to learn, and no one to teach them. They were understandably anxious and easily frightened. Of course they seemed mindless. After my eyes were opened to sheep, I looked for examples of their intelligence, and have found none better than the story of the fearsome Rambo who, after living in the Sanctuary, was calmed by Kathy's care and kindness to the point that he was able to understand his surroundings as well as she did. On his own, he purposefully saved the lives of some of the other inhabitants. I won't spoil the book by telling his astonishing story. I'll just say that it rings perfectly true. A person or an excellent dog might act as Rambo acted. I can also say, categorically, that if Rambo hadn't found Kathy, or vice versa, he would have been shot, and his life and amazing ability would have been wasted. Foreword Blind Horse 2.indd 17 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM 18 Where the Blind Horse Sings If only one of the stories herein had been told-especially the story of the blind horse of the title-the book would have achieved its goal of education. We cannot read about this horse without opening our hearts to him. Hence the cumulative effect of all the stories, and of the history of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, is powerful indeed. Of the dozens of books about animals that are published every year, very few change the way we think about them. But after reading this book, we will think differently about farm animals. With their complex intelligence and empathetic behavior, they have much to teach us. We can ignore the identity of a serving of meat as long as we know nothing else about it, but we can't ignore the identity of our teachers. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas March 2007 Blind Horse 2.indd 18 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM Where the Blind Horse Sings Blind Horse 2.indd 19 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM Blind Horse 2.indd 20 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM 21 It's there every time I enter the barn: a love so palpable that I often feel my heart will explode. My partner and I founded Catskill Animal Sanctuary, a haven for abused and abandoned farm animals, in 2001, and what surprises me most six years into the work is not what callous people do to animals, not the long, hard days, not the many uncertainties inherent in rescue work. A volunteer once commented to me, "There's so much love here it's even in the dirt," and yes, she was right. CAS breathes love. That is the biggest surprise. That is my greatest source of pride. I spent my childhood surrounded by animals on the rolling hills of a Virginia horse farm. At the height of his success, my father had nearly 150 horses: mares with their foals frolicking in two enormous pastures, yearlings awaiting training, older horses either in training or rehabilitating from injuries, and big, flashy stallions in whose shiny coats I could virtually see my reflection. Two hundred acres and five barns filled with hay and horses and people caring for them made for a wondrous childhood. Add to that a collection of family dogs, goats given to us as Easter gifts, Introduction Blind Horse 2.indd 21 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM 22 Where the Blind Horse Sings a sheep named Babbette who wore diapers in the house, a burro named Linda, an assortment of barn cats, George the mynah bird, and my own series of show ponies and horses, and you've got a sense of the magical menagerie that, on some level, I took for granted. But lordie, lordie, how I loved each and every critter. It would have been enough to have a childhood in which every day was an adventure, in which playing meant watching minnows dart at the river's edge, or rolling in the grass with the dogs, or hiding in the hayloft as dozens of horses napped beneath me. But in addition, I was loved, smart, and popular. Such a scenario will do a number on a sensitive child who realizes she's done nothing to earn it! From a very young age, wanting the same happiness for others that I've experienced has driven many of my decisions both large and small. I've always, for instance, stood up for the underdog. Sad for the one who felt excluded, I befriended the special-needs child, or the shy child, or the child with Down syndrome. Even as a little girl, I had a knee-jerk intolerance for prejudice of any sort-particularly racism-and chided anyone, child or adult, who made racist remarks, even if they were made privately. "Speak your truth," I would instruct my students years later. It's something I've always done. After all, if by virtue of birth I was given so many gifts, then even as a pipsqueak I made sure that those less lucky than I were at least respected. I left the South in 1983 and entered graduate school at Boston's Tufts University the following year. After two years in a public-policy program (my focus, naturally, was civil rights), the idea of "making a difference" from behind a desk was utterly unappealing. Much to my own amazement, I wanted to teach. I Blind Horse 2.indd 22 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM 23 wanted to impact young people's lives by working directly with them. So I added a third year of graduate school and took my first English-teaching job just north of Boston in 1987. If the evaluations and awards and invitations to teach teachers were legitimate measures, I was a good teacher for eleven years. If nothing else, my students were better writers and thinkers when they left each June than they had been the previous September. But I always hoped for grander success. I hoped that they had learned to believe in themselves and in their ability to direct their own lives. I hoped that they were happier people. I suppose I was nothing if not predictable. After a decade in the classroom, I was offered a position as principal at a high school opening in Boston. Why didn't I leap at the opportunity? Though I never tired of my students, schools and their struggles had become tiresome. As much as I had enjoyed and grown from my years in the classroom, as much as I'd always envisioned myself heading a school, I felt ready for an entirely new challenge. So one warm June day, I made my final end-of-the-year speech to my final group of graduating seniors, encouraging them to be bold, to have courage, to write their own stories. But what, I wondered, would be mine? "What do you love? What do you believe in, Kathy? What do you do best? How do you want to spend your day?" I took my time with this decision: I wanted it to count. So, I wrote. I talked with friends. I cashed in my teacher's retirement to live on while I waited for answers to come. Mostly, I took epic hikes through the woods with my yellow lab and best pal, Murphy. Murphy, unfortunately, was no help at all. Whenever I asked him what I should do with the rest of my life, he grabbed a stick Introduction Blind Horse 2.indd 23 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM 24 Where the Blind Horse Sings and crouched down into play stance. "So that's it . . . play with you for the rest of my life?" "Ruff!" he barked enthusiastically. Three insights guided me through this important period of reflection: I detested suffering and felt compelled to address it . . . in some fashion. I loved teaching, and suspected I would miss the experience if it were excluded altogether from whatever came next. I loved and missed having animals in my life. I considered veterinary school, but knew that as a vet, I'd miss the classroom. I considered charter schools whose missions were in sync with my educational philosophy, but this scenario lacked animals. One spring morning I woke up not to singing goldfinches and bluebirds, but to the faintest voice whispering in my ear: "Find a way to combine them." "What does that mean: teach children about animal suffering? Connect suffering children with happy animals?" I snapped back. Patience is not my long suit. "You're getting warmer," the voice encouraged. "Who are you talking to?" my partner Jesse, woken from his reverie, asked me. "My invisible friend." I turned to the Internet and discovered animal sanctuaries: nonprofit havens for discarded and abused animals of all sorts: 1. 2. 3. Blind Horse 2.indd 24 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM 25 dogs, iguanas, birds, turtles, tigers, cats, horses, and pigs. It was also on the Web that I first learned how we raise our food animals, and recoiled in horror and disbelief. Billions of animals each year are raised in misery and terror. Chickens, pigs, ducks, and turkeys are raised inside ammonia-filled warehouses, packed on top of each other, lacking room even to turn around. Male chicks are gassed, crushed, or suffocated because the egg industry can't profit from them. Veal calves are taken from their mothers right after birth, raised in boxes so tiny that they are unable to turn around. Horror upon horror is heaped upon billions of animals treated as nothing more than units of production by mega-companies concerned only about maximizing profit. Cows, so docile and kind by nature. Quirky, inquisitive chickens and turkeys. Pigs: such sensitive, smart, and emotional animals! Their suffering was too much for me to bear. How could I not know about this? Why don't people know about this? The answer was obvious: the meat, egg, and dairy industries-big, big businesses backed by powerful lobbyists and plenty of friends in Congress-don't want us to know. Overnight, I had my answer. Everything that spoke to the deepest and truest parts of myself-alleviating the suffering of others, speaking my truth toward that end, teaching, and surrounding myself with animals-would be represented in an organization that I, with lots of help, would create. I would create a "teaching sanctuary"-a haven for abused animals that would also help people understand what we're doing to the cows, chickens, pigs, and others who share our planet, and how that treatment impacts all of us and the planet we share. It was time to get to work. Introduction Blind Horse 2.indd 25 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM 26 Where the Blind Horse Sings ? A few months later, Jesse and I pulled to a stop at the end of a rutted dirt driveway. We were met by a square, weathered woman who greeted us not with a hello, but with the words, "Gotta warn ya . . . it's not easy." Her name was Gail and she ran a small Virginia sanctuary called Happy Acres. Her place was our first stop on a tour of East Coast sanctuaries. What better way to learn than from those who were doing the work? Within three minutes of our arrival, Jesse and I were backing toward the car. The "happy acres" described on Gail's Web site numbered no more than six to eight, yet housed over three hundred animals. Sickly cows inhabited a garage-sized pen, and next to them were the filthiest chickens I'd ever seen. As I bent to say hello, a limping goose hissed behind me. Where were the "acres and acres" of grazing that her Web site described? "Out there," she motioned, pointing to a three-acre field. But there were no animals in the pasture! "Yeah . . . we bring them all in close to the barn in cold weather. Saves us walking farther than we need to," was Gail's explanation. It was eighty degrees, Gail kept spitting, and the animals at Happy Acres didn't seem so happy. It was time to leave. Terry Cummings, cofounder of Maryland's Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, told us that the entrance was easy to miss. Five hours after leaving Happy Acres, Jesse said, "I think we just passed it." I knew this would be a very different experience. In numerous phone conversations, Terri had been sharp, savvy, and helpful, and I was sure her sanctuary would be a wonderful haven. It was. Terry and her partner David had clearly done their Blind Horse 2.indd 26 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM 27 homework. Their vision was clear, they had attracted passionate volunteers, they knew the importance of good PR. Most importantly, their animals, snug in their cozy shelters or grazing in enormous pastures, were healthy and happy. We spent a long day at Poplar Spring, and are still grateful to Terry for her invaluable insights. Four weeks from the day we set out, Jesse and I had seen more filth, neglect, and overcrowding at "sanctuaries" than we'd ever have believed. Most of the places we visited seemed marginal; a few should have been closed for cruelty. But the good ones were wonderful, and we came home with a few gems of advice that informed everything we did until we hung out our shingle six months later. A lovely young attorney named Michael Graff held our hands through the legal preliminaries: writing bylaws and articles of incorporation, registering with the state and federal governments as a nonprofit, applying for tax-exempt status. We e-mailed a press release to the regional papers, and over sixty people attended an informational session at which we introduced ourselves and our mission and announced that we were seeking land and volunteers. The animals, we knew, would come. We had been advised by nearly all sanctuaries we visited that, as a start-up organization, we should get the use of land donated. That night a woman who lived on the same road we did offered the temporary use of her fifty acres, and over twenty people signed on as volunteers. Our Web site was up, our legal ducks were in a row, and a ready-made farm was a mile from our home. CAS was officially born. Six years after we took in our first animal, Catskill Animal Introduction Blind Horse 2.indd 27 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM 28 Where the Blind Horse Sings Sanctuary has saved the lives of more than 1,100 farm animals- nearly all of them victims of unspeakable suffering. We have accepted animals seized by police from failed or fraudulent sanctuaries, and from one sanctuary whose directors simply ran out of gas. We have worked closely with the state police and the New York State Humane Association to prosecute serial abusers who keep animals in filth and confinement, and I hope to tell some of these stories in a future book. (Sadly, we generally don't learn of these situations until many animals have died of starvation.) On weekends, visitors come to meet our remarkable residents. How they laugh when Rambo the sheep demands to have his rear end scratched, and when Franklin, our young orphaned pig, trots up and says, "Glad you're here! Have some lunch for me?" And most guests are dead silent, as I was, when they learn what we do to the animals people eat. Without question, the work is always challenging, sometimes exceptionally difficult. We certainly have our share of profoundly sad days. But CAS is a joy-driven place, a place where laughter and delight are routine. It's the underpinning of everything we do here, and it's contagious. More than that, though, I think it actually heals. In this little book there is some, but not much, discussion of the terror and suffering endured by countless animals raised for food-animals who are raised without any regard for their physical or psychological well-being. Many people with far more expertise than I have written about agribusiness and its devastating consequences for animals, humans, and the planet we share. I've listed some of their works in "Bookshelf," at the end of this book. Blind Horse 2.indd 28 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM 29 The purpose of this book is to show you who these delightful creatures are, with the hope that you, too, will fall in love with animals you have probably never considered. If, at the end of it, you're ready to learn the truth about what we do to them, how it's destroying the earth, and what you can do to help, then the critters of CAS have done their job. For now, welcome to Catskill Animal Sanctuary. Introduction Blind Horse 2.indd 29 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM Blind Horse 2.indd 30 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM Part One First Steps Blind Horse 2.indd 31 3/6/2007 12:59:23 PM Blind Horse 2.indd 32 3/6/2007 12:59:24 PM 33 A year after we moved into our temporary residence, we began in earnest the search for a permanent home. Our criteria were simple: seventy-five acres or more, a few pre-existing shelters, and a house on the premises. For our own convenience and sanity (and that of future volunteers), we also hoped to be closer to either Kingston or New Paltz, two small cities that were both thirty minutes from our current home. The area where we lived was nearly twenty miles from the interstate. One small, foul-smelling grocery store sold junk food and rotting fruit, and the only restaurant was a diner: hardly an option for vegetarians. Much to our alarm, a million dollars or more was the going rate for farms of that size. No matter our early success at fundraising, that kind of price tag was way out of reach. We quickly learned, too, that much of the value at that level was in the home that came as part of the package: wonderful eighteenthcentury stone houses with six-hundred-square-foot living rooms, or nineteenth-century, five-bedroom clapboards with deep farm-
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication:
Horses -- New York (State) -- Anecdotes.
Domestic animals -- New York (State) -- Anecdotes.
Animal rescue -- New York (State) -- Anecdotes.
Catskill Animal Sanctuary -- Anecdotes.