Crosswinds
Equine Rescue, Inc.
Published Eastern Illini Electric Cooperative's Illinios Country Living, July 2004 edition
Reprints may be purchased by contacting EIEC directly
(4 segments published -- overview, then focuses on Miata, Dolly and Sandy)
AnnMarie Cross runs
Crosswinds Equine Rescue, Inc. with her husband Mike and help from their
daughter Tory and very dedicated volunteers like locals Marcy Lawhead, Steve
Downey, Glynis Reeves, and Bill Clemons. This safe haven for horses developed in
2001 and became a non-profit foundation just a year ago. After plans to become
an equine vet fell through due to other responsibilities, AnnMarie never gave up
her dream to work with horses someday. At Cornell University she had worked with
a very aggressive, abused, underweight racehorse to overcome her fears of men.
AnnMarie says, “I spent 6 months with her and we placed her with a male
college student playing polo and it was just the most rewarding thing.”
After moving into rural
Douglas County, AnnMarie started planning to help horses. “I said all I wanted
is someplace I could have horses again. Mike didn’t realize quite how many I
meant. Neither did I. We can hold 12 here now.”
“She started running this
full time about a year ago,” says Mike. “We started playing with finances
and decided we could just barely do this.”
The Cross family is able to
help the horses because of tax deductible sponsorships, donations and adoption
fees. “We charge adoption fees. The way we figure that is, if this horse had
never been in a rescue situation, what would we expect it to sell for, and then
we set our adoption fee at half that,” says AnnMarie. Sponsors make regular
donations, and can offer to pay all of a particular horse’s expenses or offer
a specific amount each month for general use. AnnMarie says she is very lucky to
have a sponsor for Miata. “Without his sponsor, we couldn’t do everything we
do for him. She pays his expenses every month.” Miata also receives free
chiropractic care from King Equine Chiropractic in Tolono .
Other organizations and
horse lovers donate cash, feed and veterinarian services. A store in Ogden
donates 250 pounds of feed a month. A horse lover picks up several bags of feed
each time she buys for her own horses. A farmer near Paxton donated 450 bales of
hay. Other farmers have donated what hay they have left over. All donations and
sponsorship money is tax deductible.
AnnMarie buys many of the
horses she rescues from auctions. “It’s usually just me and the meat buyers
interested in them. And the buyers don’t make any effort to let me have them
cheap, they bid up to their top dollar.” AnnMarie worries that if the proposed
horse slaughter plant opens up in Dekalb, the meat buyers will be able to pay
more for horses because shipping charges will be considerably less. “Last
year, 57,000 American horses went through the two plants in Texas, to be shipped
to Europe and Japan for ‘fine cuisine’, despite how the American people feel
about our horses as a part of our heritage and as companion animals, not
food,” says AnnMarie.
The rescue is currently
actively seeking usable lumber, or funds to purchase new lumber, for a new hay
storage facility. “We have nearly 600 bales of hay waiting to come onto the
farm this spring, but nowhere to store them. Even single 2x4x10’ boards, or
donations as small as $5, would help us to get this project rolling so we can
properly store the donated hay. Storing it outside wastes a huge proportion of
its nutritional value, so it is important we get this structure built this
spring.”
If you would like to help
AnnMarie save more horses from the fate of the Texas plants, contact her at:
217-832-2010
on the web at: http://www.crosswindseqresq.org.
or mail a donation directly
to:
Crosswinds
Equine Rescue, Inc.
1476
NCR 1350 E
Tuscola IL 61953
Miata
AnnMarie was
at an auction with her oldest daughter, Gerry, when Gerry spotted Miata, a huge
red horse that was hundreds of pounds underweight and badly injured. “My
daughter said, ‘Mom, you can’t let him go back with the man who brought him,
he’s going to starve and he won’t even live long enough to be here next
month.’ So we paid what we call his ransom, the price the man insisted on for
him and we brought him home,” says AnnMarie.
Miata’s
recovery has been a slow, painstaking process. “We weren’t sure he was going
to make it when he came. We weren’t sure he would ever be normal again,”
confides AnnMarie. His back was injured in a car accident and his wound was
badly infected. He was starving, had a horrible case of mange, and moved stiffly
because his shoulder dislocates. “He’s an incredible horse, incredible to
ride when his back isn’t hurting. He moves beautifully. He’s got real
personality. He’s pretty silly. When he runs around and plays he is the most
gorgeous thing to see,” says AnnMarie. “We hope by fall, Miata will be a
normal horse again and ready to go on to a new home.”
Dolly
AnnMarie took
on another challenge when she brought Dolly, a Percheron draft horse, home.
“She was horribly overweight when she came here. She suffered from a very
common draft illness called EPSM, also known as tying up disease. If draft
horses are fed the same rich feed when they aren’t working as when they are,
it is like when an athlete has lactic acid build up in their muscles, it just
ties up their whole body.” It took about six weeks for Dolly to recover and
master more than one tiny step at a time. Now she is learning to be a riding
horse. Dolly is the only draft horse to throw Mike more than once, she has
incredible power and is very intelligent.
“We’ve
really found that draft horses are a niche for us. There are an awful lot of
throw-away drafts out there and Mike does so well with them. Dolly has been the
hardest challenge for him,” says AnnMarie. Dollie is now nearly ready to go to
her new home in Kentucky.
Sandy
Sandy was
brought into an auction ring terrified of all humans. Spunky and proud, not even
knowing how to lead, she didn’t interest most buyers at the auction. AnnMarie
outbid the meat buyer and brought her home. “She saw me and decided I was too
little to be scary so she liked me,” says 11- -year-old Tory Cross. The two
became fast friends. For a year, Tory was the only one who could handle Sandy.
“A few summers ago I went to New York for a month and she missed my human
attention so she decided that all humans were all right then.” Last year when
Tory was ill, AnnMarie would let Sandy out of the pasture and Sandy would run to
the livingroom window and tap on the window to visit with her Tory.