10/30/2024
Often, the goal is to simply negotiate a surrender.
It is never that simple, though.
For this case almost 3 years ago, I was not yet a humane agent. On this day, as I had for years and years before, and will continue to be for years and years to come… I was a simply a regular joe who knew horses.
We are often brought in by the law-enforcement of different counties to help them assess neglect situations. Often, the issues can be remedied with some tweaking and we all go on about our day. Other times, it’s clear that the situation will never improve, requiring further action on our part.
Very often, the mental health struggles of the owner is the main cause of the latter scenario.
Most times, seizing a neglected animal immediately isn’t an option. Even when legal, there are warrants, seizures, and court dates that can go wrong a dozen different ways before an abused animal is finally awarded to its rescuers. Simply put, it’s never black-and-white, and rolling the dice in these cases can be risky.
Today, on this day, the best chance this pony had, and maybe his only chance ever, was to try to get his owner to surrender him to us.
As we were standing in the dank aisleway of an old barn tucked away in a holler, we looked into a stall with fifteen year’s worth of manure packed and stacked so high that the 28” pony inside stood on top of it with his eyes level to mine. The owner said his stall door hadn’t been able to be opened in years. I climbed up over his stall walls to get inside and I knelt down next to him.
My only job that day was to be effective.
It’s a dance, talking somebody out of an animal that they claim to love yet have horribly abused.
As you can imagine, it’s also a trick to navigate some sense into something that can never make sense.
It’s re-deescalating the situation after accidentally saying a single sentence of flammable truth that happens to offend the offender.
It’s making a point without making an enemy.
It’s being friendly enough to get what you want, but not so friendly that you justify their actions.
Hint at the wrong idea and get kicked off their property. Yet reword it slightly, and you might get a surrender.
Don’t offend, but point out truth.
Don’t tell them what they’re going to do, but give them choices and let them decide so they feel in control.
Keep calm, like none of it even matters to you at all even though you know it’s the horses’s last shot.
To be honest, it’s manipulation, on behalf of the suffering. It is a skill sharpened over years by the regular joes in the trenches… those who beg for lives without begging.
We can’t actually beg, of course… because then they’ll know you want it, which means it must have value, which means that they should keep it. You lose.
Mental illness is a dodgy devil to dance with, and must be handled with kid gloves, no matter how we feel about a situation.
On this day, after hours of talking, the owner agreed to sign this pony over to Bella Run Equine. I hurried back to the farm, got the trailer, and we flew back to get him before she changed her mind.
It worked. He was rescued.
A negotiated surrender.
And there we were, just regular joes headed home with a new pony and a signed surrender form.
We named him Arby.
In the days and weeks following his rescue, people would see him and ask “Where did he come from?”
It was easiest to just say “He was an owner surrender.”
Surrendered, in exactly the way so many here get to be.
Bella Run Equine is a non-profit organization. Your donations are what keeps us in the trenches helping horses like this one.
Arby’s Update:
https://www.facebook.com/share/14reieayAD/?mibextid=WC7FNe
