Yesterday, Sarge, a 17-year-old blind and discarded trail horse came home to Blue Star Equiculture in Palmer, Mass. He will live the rest of his life in comfort, peace and dignity there with our help.
This morning, Blue Star launched a crowdsourcing campaign on gofundme to raise money for the hay and medical care that Sarge urgently needs, now and for the rest of his life.
Sarge has a powerful story to tell. He is already teaching us a lot.
Last August, Sarge was sent to auction in New York State. A kill buyer for a slaughterhouse was buying him when representatives of Dorset Equine Rescue in Vermont stepped in and outbid him. He was minutes away from an awful fate, one that awaits more than 150,000 horses in America each year.
Dorset Rescue bought Sarge for $525, and have spent the last nine months working with him, caring for him, socializing him. Sarge was frightened and disoriented by the rapid loss of his sight. He has lost 90 per cent of the vision in his left eye 100 per cent in his right. He is expected to lost all of his sight soon.
Sarge is a sweet and generous and playful horse, he has a great deal of life to live.
It costs more than $6,000 a year to care for the horses at Blue Star. Paul Moshimer and Pamela Rickenbach-Moshimer, the co-directors at Blue Star, are always reluctant to exploit their horses to raise money. They also provide the best and most loving possible care, and that is an expensive and crushing reality in our world. I am glad they decided to create a gofundme project for Sarge.
I believe very strongly in Blue Star, I believe it is a model for the best way forward for animals and the people who love them. Animals are too often either seen as beasts of burden or piteous and dependent beings. At Blue Star, they are neither, they are our partners in the world. Blue Star seeks ways for people and animals to work together so that animals can remain in or every day lives, not be driven away. We need them and they need us. The horses have been forgotten, they and their legacy live at Blue Star.
You can learn more about Blue Star here. You can follow Blue Star on Facebook and see Sarge’s arrival here.
Today’s animal world is in a sad angry place, wracked by controversy, argument and cruelty, to people and animals both. For the sake of animals, we need a wiser understanding of them and us, and of our relationship with them. I see that at Blue Star. They love animals, saves them, cares for them well. And they love and help people as well. Blue Star does not assault, intimidate or threaten people. They treat people and animals with compassion and dignity. There are no secret informers there, no harassment or targeted people or businesses. They do not seek to remove animals from us. They are the new way, the Third Way of understanding animals in our world.
Sarge is the perfect symbol of the plight of horses and of our way to a better way to help them than exists now. Blue Star is seeking $12,500 to help care for Sarge, I hope they get that and more, they will use every penny of it well. They have a lot of wonderful animals in need. I am going to Blue Star Sunday to see how Sarge is doing, I will, of course, report back. You can help Sarge here. And thanks, we are part of a new social awakening, a wiser understanding of the animals in our world and of their future with us.