{"id":52412,"date":"2020-07-31T19:12:21","date_gmt":"2020-08-01T01:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-woman-cares-for-27-rescue-horses-during-pandemic\/"},"modified":"2020-08-01T01:12:21","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T01:12:21","slug":"durango-woman-cares-for-27-rescue-horses-during-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-woman-cares-for-27-rescue-horses-during-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango woman cares for 27 rescue horses during pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Courtesy
Courtesy of Anne-marie Ferreti Mee<br><br>Robin, left, and Raven arrive at Spring Creek Horse Rescue in July. Diane McCracken cares for 29 rescue horses on the farm, with the help of some volunteers and donors. But COVID-19 has made it harder to get volunteers and donors.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Diane McCracken delicately makes her way down a muddy slope in the pasture to where two horses stand huddled in the corner. They stand side by side, back to front, using their tails to swish flies away from each other\u2019s faces.<\/p>\n

The small black mare, Raven, and the chestnut colt, Robin, came to Spring Creek Horse Rescue<\/a> from a feedlot, where they were crammed in with many other horses in tight pens, headed for a slaughterhouse. But they look up and move closer as McCracken calls to them and talks to them.<\/p>\n

Raven and Robin are far from the first horses McCracken has taken in \u2013 she has been running the no-kill horse rescue for 44 years with the help of locals and volunteers.<\/p>\n

But during the COVID-19 shutdown, volunteers for the Durango rescue returned to their home states to care for elderly relatives, or didn\u2019t want to spread the virus at the farm.<\/p>\n

She cared for 27 horses and miniature donkeys on her own.<\/p>\n

\"Courtesy
Courtesy of Anne-marie Ferreti Mee<br><br>Miniature donkeys Dusty, right, and Dewey live their days free of abuse at Spring Creek Horse Rescue.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cIt was getting pretty hard,\u201d McCracken said. \u201cYou just do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The herd at the horse rescue shows she\u2019s not one to give up on animals \u2013 or people. One horse, a gray named Samuel, has knees blown out so bad he can barely walk. He was overridden in show arenas and sold when the previous owners felt they had no use for him anymore.<\/p>\n

Under McCracken\u2019s care, he is 44 years old and enjoying life in Durango.<\/p>\n

\u201cOther people would say he\u2019s taking up space,\u201d McCracken said. \u201cBut doesn\u2019t he deserve a chance?\u201d<\/p>\n

An Appaloosa horse named Colton came to the rescue after he was beaten by a previous owner as a young colt. McCracken watched him grow up on her farm and become a happy, healthy horse.<\/p>\n

When visitors walk into the barn, the first thing they see is a looming gray horse, Watchman, calling out a greeting and calling for attention. But the same horse was \u201cscared of everything, skinny with bad feet\u201d when he first arrived, McCracken said.<\/p>\n

\"Courtesy
Courtesy of Anne-marie Ferreti Mee<br><br>Samuel, gray, and Chloe enjoy a brighter future at Spring Creek Horse Rescue. Samuel was overridden in the past, causing his knees to swell and become practically unusable. But McCracken has given him a home for life.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

She will do the same for Robin and Raven, the new horses from the feedlot, who are sick and have worms.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you explain to people the importance of that without them seeing it and feeling it themselves?\u201d McCracken said.<\/p>\n

A lot of the ranch hands that come to Spring Creek Horse Rescue are assigned volunteer hours through the local court system. Once they learn more about the horse rescue and what it can do for these animals, some get attached to the horses and want to work with them, McCracken said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey need the horses, and the horses need them,\u201d she said. She watched one volunteer learn where he needed to go instead of drifting \u2013 to veterinary school.<\/p>\n

McCracken started college with the goal of becoming a vet but found she didn\u2019t have the heart to operate on animals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been bringing animals home since I was 4 years old,\u201d McCracken said. \u201cSnakes, cats, dogs \u2026 they all deserve a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCracken brought her reputation as an animal caregiver from Detroit to Durango. About 40 years ago, a local quarter horse breeder had a mare accidentally step on a foal. It needed extra care, so he brought it to McCracken. The rest was history.<\/p>\n

\"Courtesy
Courtesy of Anne-marie Ferreti Mee<br><br>A visiting trainer from England, Rhea Ebel-Childs, works with a young horse, Ruby, to train her under saddle, so she will be adopted by a Colorado family.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cEverybody knew everybody. It didn\u2019t take long to get the word out,\u201d McCracken said.<\/p>\n

On a farm that size, McCracken doesn\u2019t just care for horses. She also needs help with ranch chores like tree clearing, fence mending and irrigation. Those responsibilities don\u2019t stop during a pandemic, but the nonprofit rescue currently doesn\u2019t have the financial capacity to pay workers.<\/p>\n

The COVID-19 shutdown hit people in the community hard economically, so donations are down at the rescue, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t have irrigation water for a month,\u201d McCracken said.<\/p>\n

With the responsibility of 29 horses on her shoulders, McCracken said what she could really use is safe fencing along the bottom of the property so she could let the horses out without worrying they will fall into the drainage ditch that runs along the south side of the pastures.<\/p>\n

Without fencing to block off the steep, concrete water ditch, McCracken can only use 10% of the rescue property.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere used to be a lot more skilled horse people, but all the agricultural horse people have left for Wyoming and Idaho,\u201d McCracken said. The number of new developments in Colorado and the high price of land have driven them away, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut this is still my home, and we make other people\u2019s lives better because of the horses we\u2019ve saved,\u201d McCracken said.<\/p>\n

ehayes@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spring Creek Horse Rescue can\u2019t shut down<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-52412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52412"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=52412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}