Guest blog by Gloria Schramm: "Bonnie runs free in my heart: Ode to a mare"

Image by Lori Minette from Pixabay 

Today I write with a heavy heart and an empty pit in my stomach. Yesterday I tried to save a horse from slaughter. I promised myself I wouldn’t get involved with Facebook group posts that come to my feed that convey frantic messages to save a horse and post beautiful videos and information. All from places that will ship the horse out on a crowded truck with other horses

This time, in an apparently weak moment, I did. Her name was Bonnie Bernice, a beautiful, brown mare with soulful eyes, a quarter horse and thoroughbred with papers showing she was registered as such. She was held at an “agriculture center” in Arkansas, about fifteen hundred miles away from me in New York, waiting for someone to adopt her. This center said that they are a networking service to buy horses time that otherwise would be sent directly to slaughter and give them a chance as go-betweens, to offer them for adoption. There was a deadline. Some people bought her a reprieve from execution. Four and a half thousand people saw her video and saw her details. I can’t believe no one at least locally, adopted her.

Bonnie was a brown beautiful thoroughbred quarter horse. Looked gentle enough in her video led around on a rope as if she was parading in a beauty pageant. God, I can’t believe no one reached out for her to take home. Her soulful eyes beckoned me as she looked directly into the camera.

And me? Smitten. I live in a crowded suburb with no accommodations for a horse and no stables nearby that I can rent. So, I contacted every horse rescue organization in that state where she was and a thoroughbred association and horse foundation. I emailed, used Facebook message box, etc. One rescue organization asked for my phone number and called me. He said donations were down at this time. He asked me to email him all the information, which I did. Everyone got my messages and answered that they’d call or look into it. But no one got back to me that they took the horse. Ghosted! I can only assume no one stepped forward in Bonnie’s state.

Friday came. It was 9-11 the nineteenth anniversary of the World Trade Center disaster that also encompassed Shanksville Pennsylvania and the Pentagon. Three thousand people were murdered and many knew they were breathing their last. It was also the twenty-third anniversary of my mother’s sudden passing. And, to top things off miserably, my husband and I marked fifteen years since our youngest son died from his drug addiction.

And Friday, Sept. 11, 2020, was the day Bonnie Bernice, the quarter horse thoroughbred in Arkansas, was due to ship out to a kill pen. The woman who posted frantically about her originally, called upon my insistence, asking for more time for her, as I thought I had bites. They told her no. They also said people had bought her extensions but that they weren’t giving out any more extensions. If someone was to come forward, they had to act quickly. That day! I told them so.

It was all too much to take.

Whatever possessed me to get involved? Many times, several years ago, I got involved and managed to save one in Texas, but many more, not. Every horse rescue farm or therapy center was absolutely full. Now, it was a matter of COVID 19 meaning less donations, because of unemployment and uncertainty because of this global health crisis.

Bonnie got to me. Maybe I got involved instantly when viewing the Facebook post, because I wanted to save a horse, or because I couldn’t save my son from his addictions. The very real possibility of losing Bonnie to a Mexican kill pen if no one claimed her, was a trigger to feelings about my son. I carry the burden of having lost him and now I carry her in my broken heart with holes through it and a nauseating feeling in my stomach and a paralyzing feeling in my chest that chips away pieces of me, that somehow this equine soul evaporated into the ether of eternity. Poof. Gone.

I have since returned to HorseAbility in Old Westbury NY to volunteer for disabled children. I groom horses and sidewalk them when the children and teens are riding the horses. I have adopted Annabelle with hubby and am happy enough to have done that much. Adoption is really sponsorship with a monthly donation amount, which is affordable. Horse rescues have this kind of program as well. It helps. Every little bit helps with hay and maintenance.

I am afraid to find out Bonnie’s fate. Lacking the courage to face the almost definite possibility that Bonnie is no more, I’d like to think some last-minute miracle happened and someone came by to save her. Bonnie’s video was taken off the center’s site where she was housed in transience and was not listed on the page of the website that showed which horses were “SAFE” and “ADOPTED.”

I can’t bear that the truck left and that she will be brutally slaughtered in a place where people make a living…slaughtering animals in the most horrific ways, inflicting pain and cutting them up. No amount of letters sent to government representatives will make a difference, except in the United States: horse slaughter is against the law on American soil – but not transporting them to other countries. We call these “agricultural centers” kill pens. They place a fee, usually several hundred dollars – or –more – on a horse’s head. People interested in adopting a horse for their own residential farm, pay the fee. I know some non-profit rescue organizations that refuse to give these kill pens the bail money to save the horses because it supports the continuation of the kill pen business. They say, if you want to save a horse, donate to a rescue organization, which I have done.

There is so much injustice in the world. We are living against a backdrop of a nightmare of chaos, pandemic, global warming, violent weather changes, civil unrest and all sorts of other horrors. Perhaps it was always this way on the earth. Only now, it’s different. Media washes our faces in all the atrocities of the world – instantly – as they happen. It’s overwhelming. I don’t know where to look and I wind up feeling God-awful about everything and everyone. “There by the grace of God, go I” The suffering is so vast…I do have my faith. It’s all I have, when push comes to shove.

As for Bonnie, I remember a poem I found on Facebook:

“SOMEWHERE”

By Stanley Harrison

“Somewhere in time’s own space

There must be sweet pastured place

Where creeks sing on and tall trees grow

Some paradise where horses go

For by the One that guides my pen

I know great horses live again.