Horse Rescue NICE Story!

This story about a local horse rescue and sanctuary is in our local newspaper today. Thought some here would enjoy reading it!

http://www.projo.com/ri/northkingsto...9.31f097f.html

There is a photo in the story if you use the link above. Here is the article:
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This rescue/sanctuary nurses horses back to health

01:00 AM EST on Thursday, January 31, 2008

By Arline A. Fleming

Journal Staff Writer

Deidre Sharp, who operates Horse Play, an equine rescue agency and sanctuary in North Kingstown, rubs the neck of Raven, an 18-year-old Hanoverian thoroughbred.


The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy
NORTH KINGSTOWN — This craggy bend of Gilbert Stuart Road has witnessed hundreds of years passing from one calendar page to the next.

But this year the bend, and its equine occupants, are the subject of the calendar itself.

The dozen horses living at Horse Play Equine Rescue and Sanctuary have been photographed by Narragansett’s Jodie C. Sinclair and packaged into a 2008 calendar. Proceeds from sales will benefit the sanctuary, says its administrator, Deidre Sharp, who relies on grants, donations “and begging” to care for the rejected animals.

The rescue and rehabilitation of horses is a year-round project for Sharp and her volunteers. Every week, every year, she hears of horses in need of not just homes, but also rescue from slaughter. That’s one of the motivating forces behind the 2008 calendar — to bring awareness to the nationwide problem of the abused animals. And it’s the reason for Sharp’s commitment to the project she started in 1999.

“You know when there is something you need to do,” says Sharp.

Sharp says many people are sensitive to abandoned cats and dogs, horrified by animal abuse, but remain keenly unaware of neglect in the equine world.

“Profoundly unaware,” agrees Beth Hill Ross, of Saunderstown, founder of New England Equine Rescues, a network connecting horse owners and rescuers. “Even horse people don’t know. There’s a big need for people to take horses . . . .

“People have no clue.”

That has its effect at the sanctuary, where those saved roam the 82 acres just up the hill from the Gilbert Stuart Birthplace.

“We have a waiting list,” Sharp says.

The nonprofit Horse Play not only provides rescue for abused, neglected and slaughter-bound horses, but also shelters horses with health and behavior problems, or those whose owners can no longer keep them.

Horses, like people, “are living longer than they did in the past,” says Rhode Island’s state veterinarian, Dr. Scott Marshall. “It’s not unusual to find them living well into their 30s.”

Marshall says that horses have evolved in many cases from livestock to pets, and so owners are caring for them “into their geriatric years.” And it makes for an expensive pet, one not everyone can care for long-term.

As a result, he says, “the plight of the unwanted horse is growing on a national level.”

Horse abuse and neglect “is a very, very big problem,” echoes Dr. Hollie Stillwells, of the New England Horse Care Center, in North Smithfield. “Nationwide, it’s a very big issue.”

Sharp estimates the cost of keeping a horse at $175 a month — and that doesn’t include medical expenses, which inevitably occur, or rental on the property where they’re kept.

“People don’t know what they are getting into with a horse.”

One horse owner with money issues lost both the horse and a farm, but Sharp managed to save half of that equation.

“She probably would have gone to slaughter,” Sharp says of that animal.

But Libby, Calypso, Little Reno and the other horses at the sanctuary are not only alive, but also serving as models for photographer Sinclair, who says she hopes to make the calendar a yearly project. She plans to photograph the horses in each of the different seasons

“I’m happy to do anything I can to help Deidre over there,” says Sinclair, who donated her time for the project “to raise awareness.”

Sinclair says she is also a practitioner of equine natural movement. That, she says, is essentially a type of massage, “a healing touch for animals.”

Her work brought her to the North Kingstown sanctuary, she says, but as a girl growing up in East Greenwich she “spent many years riding, and I just started riding again.” So she is comfortable photographing the animals, she says, and especially wants to bring attention to their plight “because I love animals.”

Which is also why Frank Guernon of Westerly volunteers at the sanctuary almost every day. The retired retail manager is one of a dozen or so people who help out at Horse Play, Sharp says.

“It’s easy to get hooked,” says Guernon, 65, who was searching for a hobby. Horses have long been an interest of his, and while checking the Internet, he found Horse Play.

He puts in his time there, he says, because “horses are the best people in the world.”

Horses sometimes come to Sharp when the owners have health problems and can’t care for them.

“Vets know about us,” Sharp says.

The animals, too, sometimes have health problems, she says. And for racehorses, there are other reasons that are more abstract: “A lot of people consider them extensions of their ego. If they are not winning, it becomes the horse’s fault.”

Having ridden for most of her life, Sharp supplements her sanctuary through instruction, putting her skills in teaching and training to use. But horses weren’t her first occupation. She started out leading excursions aboard yachts. When she arrived in Newport Harbor two decades ago, the former resident of Virginia and the Caribbean decided to stay.

She started with a therapeutic riding school and then found herself taking in homeless horses. Soon the homeless animals took priority, but they also take time and money.

Thus, the calendar.

While copies of the calendar have been available in Wakefield’s Purple Cow and Wickford’s World Store, they can also be ordered at www.cafepress.com/horseplayri. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the Horse Play calendar, which is selling for $19.99.

Or contact Sharp at (401) 294-3565. The Horse Play Web site is www.hptrc.org