HorseNet Horse Rescue

Mending horses' spirits
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By: Stephen Snyder
Published on February 18, 2001
© 2001 - Carroll County Times

Local woman cares for the abandoned
The horses can't thank her.
Perhaps, if they could speak, they would express their gratitude.

Perhaps they would thank her for mending their broken bones, cleaning their teeth, cutting back their hooves when their old owners couldn't be bothered or didn't know how.

Perhaps they would thank her for saving their lives.

But they can't and Elle Powers doesn't need them too.

She's been rescuing horses for more than 20 years. Her newest horse rescue organization, The Original HorseNet, off Klees Mill Road, houses close to 25 horses.

She tromps out toward the barn on a muddy Thursday evening, her rubber boots tied tightly against her ankles. It's feeding time and the horses are hungry. They congregate in a group next to the fence that separates them from the barn.

"They'll start knocking the fence down in a minute," Powers says.

She greets the horses by name; Frosty Rose, Tordeeja, Noble, Albert and Polly. HorseNet volunteers Gail Ragle and Bob Steinfeldt stand near the door of the barn.

"Have you seen the new girls?" Powers asks. "Aren't they cute?"

The two nod in agreement. HorseNet's latest additions have come from Garrison Forest's riding school. One of them, Frosty Rose, has back problems and can no longer be ridden. Powers will try to adopt her out as a companion horse.

"She's been with the riding school for a while. A lot of the kids will be quite upset," Powers says, petting the giant animal whose back seems to bow a little more than the rest.

Some of the horses come injured, veterans of riding schools or race-tracks.

Some horses have been neglected by previous owners. They come in dangerously underweight or malnourished.

She feeds them and gives them medicine - homeopathics, herbal remedies prescribed by the HorseNet veterinarian.

Powers might not be their doctor, but she is their savior and their guardian angel. She knows each horse by name. She commits their case histories to memory, knowing when they came to her and why. She knows their idiosyncrasies, their personality quirks, their moods and behaviors.

Misty, a large dark-brown pony, is the brat who loves attention. Albert is the 44-year-old mutt, what Powers lovingly refers to as a Heinz 57 breed. Polly, a black Irish Hunter thoroughbred, is the mean one. After 18 years put out to pasture, she doesn't like people. The volunteers at the ranch have to brush off her winter hair with a rake and tranquilize her just to trim her hooves.

Powers adopts out her horses once they are healthy. She screens everyone who adopts. She has rules. The adopters must make a serious commitment to caring for the horses. If they can't, Powers demands that they bring the horses back.

But Polly has been without human interaction too long. She is probably there to stay. The space on Powers' ranch, which she rents from Stanley Cox, is near capacity. She has to place her old horses at good homes to be able to save more.

But she refuses to sell Polly off or put any of her horses up for auction. She knows many horses sold at auctions are slaughtered for meat for other countries. She knows how they die - a bolt to the brain, their throats slit while they are still kicking. She knows how little people care sometimes - how money too often makes the decision of whether a horse lives or dies.

Light is just starting to fade as Powers prepares to feed the horses. She works a full-time job aside from caring for 25 sick or unwanted horses, which itself can be a full-time job.

She takes the lid off a giant trash can full of feed and begins scooping it into bowls on the ground. Each horse gets a combination of different types of feed: wet and dry feed, sweet feed, senior feed and beet pulp. She adds medicine for the horses that need it, sorting through the glass jars for the medicine that reduces scar tissue or heals infections or stops swelling.

Most of them don't get any medicine, however. Most of them just need to be properly cared for, to be wanted.

She points to one horse, a big strong male, one of the biggest horses on the ranch. His name is Noble. He's only 4 years old.

"When we got him he was 1,000 pounds underweight," she sighs.

There was nothing wrong with him. His former owners just didn't feed him enough.

"Any horse in a situation where it is unwanted - that horse needs to be rescued," Powers says.

She finishes putting the feed into buckets. With the help of volunteer Bill Waugh she corrals some of the horses through the gate. They run straight for the food, somehow knowing which buckets belongs to them.

Powers thinks they're smarter than we sometimes give them credit for. They serve us, pull our plows, jump fences and run around race tracks for our entertainment, serve as our pets and sometimes, still, our transportation.

And they do so willingly, obey our commands, even love us. The least we can do, she believes, is make their lives a little easier.

When the last of the horses have been fed, she stands there, ankle deep in mud, and looks out over the ranch. Some of these horses will be gone soon and others will take their place. But she'll love them and feed them and take care of them just the same.

Suddenly, Polly trots up looking agitated by the presence of people. She walks right up to Powers, her ears pinned back, her strong legs splashing up mud, her large frame pressing close, reminding Powers of her size.

But Powers' voice seems to calm.

"It's okay," she says and, not surprisingly, the horse seems to believe her. "Everything is going to be fine."