Hi everyone.
My name is Angel. I have just been named the “face” of Adopt-A-Horse, a nonprofit horse foster and rescue program. Not to brag, but I overheard people talking and they say I won the job because I am just so dang cute. Their words, not mine.
My story? I’m not sure where to start, but I guess the beginning is as good a place as any. I am a 25-year-old, black and white tobiano mini mare. From the tip of my ears to the ground I am a whopping 31 inches tall. Clark County Animal Control found me locked in a dark stall with two other minis, my best friends Lucy and Ethel, who both have found great, new homes. To be honest, I was so tired, I didn’t really care what was going on around me. All I remember from that time was some angry muttering about the floor being 3-feet deep in manure and littered with our teeth.
It was not until later that I realized animal control had taken and delivered us into the care of the Clark County Executive Horse Council’s Adopt-A-Horse program, and into the loving care of the true angel in this story: my foster mom Heather Tyrrell.
I am told I was shockingly thin — mere bones — and my rescuers were not sure if I would make it. A nice veterinarian named Dr. Anne Marie Ray of Ridgefield Equine Clinic rated me as a 1.5 on the BCS. I didn’t know what that meant and was too tired to care, but later found out they were talking about a BCS score, or an equine body conditioning score, which is a scale that measures equine body weight from 1 to 10.
I don’t really like to think about my past. Instead, I like to think about my new life and my own personal angel, my foster mom. My first two weeks with her are still kind of blurry, but I do remember her feeding me small amounts of warm mash around the clock and monitoring my temperature day and night. Apparently, I could not regulate my body temperature and swung widely from violently shivering during hot August days — requiring double blankets — to drenched in sweat and needing to be cooled down with wet towels.
My hero, Heather, stayed with me through it all. Can you believe, thanks to her great care, that meanie Dr. Anne told her to cut back a bit on my groceries? And that I am getting a little chubby. OK, Dr. Anne really isn’t a meanie. In truth, she is great, but seriously, a diet?
As I said, I like to think of my foster mom as an angel. It was she who gave me my name. She kept saying I was such a sweet angel and I guess it kind of stuck.
I like it. It reminds me of her when I hear it.
So now I am Angel, the official spokes(horse) for the Adopt-A-Horse Program. I can’t wait to start my new life and share my story with the world.
I will be in the kids corral at the Washington State Horse Expo at the Clark County Event Center all three days of the show. Stop by and visit. I can’t wait to meet you all.
— Angel
