BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (AP) - It might have been the most satisfying whinny Catherine Limkeman had ever heard from Declan, the horse she transported from Ozark, Ill., to Warren County’s Rainhill Equine Facility.
After she led Declan – a 12-year-old thoroughbred/quarter horse mix – on a muddy walk from the horse trailer he had ridden in for three hours, Limkeman watched as he settled into the Starfire stall of the Rainhill facility’s barn.
When the high-pitched whinnying started, Limkeman knew she had made the right choice in bringing Declan from the Camp Ondessonk youth retreat that had been his home for seven years and relocating him to the 185-acre facility in the Anna community.
“He’s calling out to the other horses,” said Limkeman, equestrian director at Camp Ondessonk. “He looks comfortable to me.”
Declan seemed content in his new surroundings and among the 48 other horses that call Rainhill home – even if he couldn’t see them.
Left blind by a disease called uveitis, Declan hadn’t been able to give rides to youngsters at the Catholic Church-sponsored camp since last fall, leaving Limkeman to search for a new home that would detour the animal away from a slaughterhouse.
“I’ve been looking for a home for Declan since September,” she said. “Eight rescue places turned me down, and about 20 other places wouldn’t take him either.
“This (Rainhill) is a godsend. I didn’t want to put him down. He is such a good horse and was one of my personal favorites to ride.”
Emelyn Herndon, Ondessonk’s assistant equestrian director, also accompanied Declan on his trip and explained that the increased liability of having a blind horse at the camp led Limkeman on a mostly futile search for a new home.
“We reached out to people within our (equestrian) community across four states,” Herndon said. “But they just don’t have the ability to take horses that are vision-impaired.”
As a result, “probably 85 percent” of such horses end up going to slaughter, according to Auburn resident and longtime Rainhill supporter Lisa Salmon.
Rainhill, started in 1984 by Karen Thurman as a for-profit business providing riding lessons and boarding horses, has since 2005 been a nonprofit dedicated to providing shelter to abused and neglected horses.
Thurman, retired from her jobs as a Cracker Barrel waitress and as a parking services employee at Western Kentucky University, never intended to specialize in providing a home for blind equines; but today 36 of the 49 horses at her facility are blind or vision-impaired.
“Out of the clear blue someone called and asked if I would take a blind horse,” recalled Thurman, 67, the sole Rainhill staff member. “It wasn’t my idea. It was one of those things that God decides. Nobody would pick anything as difficult as this.”
When she was still working and trying to pay off the mortgage on her 185-acre spread, Thurman would get up at 3:30 each morning to begin the routine of feeding and caring for the horses.
Now she jokes that she “sleeps in” until 6:30 or so before beginning her routine of showing love to animals that could easily feel both unloved and unwanted.
After Declan had been delivered and was safe in his barn stall, Thurman gently escorted another sightless horse out of the dirt road on her property. Nearby, other of her four-legged guests munched on the hay and other feed she provides.
Thurman can be quickly moved to tears as she talks about the plight of some of the animals under her care and just as quickly burst into joyous laughter at the sight of an abandoned horse now enjoying the freedom of a jaunt through a pasture on her property.
“Horses like these have no future,” she said. “Most have had multiple owners and have seen any horrible thing you can imagine. No one wants them.”
Except Thurman, who somehow continues to pay the $500-a-week grain bills and other expenses out of her savings and what donations come in to her nonprofit.
“She’s a warrior,” Salmon said of her friend. “She gets up early and doesn’t go to bed until late. If she has a sick horse, she might be up all night.”
But even Thurman knows her limits, and they nearly prevented Declan from finding a home at Rainhill.
“You wouldn’t believe the amount of phone calls I get from people wanting a home for a blind horse,” she said. “Most people I say ‘no’ to. I have to be careful not to take more than I can take care of.”
It just so happened that, when Limkeman called looking for a home for Declan, Thurman had a rare opening.
“I had a horse pass away a couple of months ago,” she said. “So when she (Limkeman) called, I had one opening. They had to find a place for him.”
That place, for dozens of blind or aging horses, has for years been Thurman’s Rainhill facility. And she has no immediate plans to stop caring for animals that are the equine equivalent of homeless persons.
“This is really crazy what I do,” Thurman said. “Taking care of the horses takes every bit of my time. I haven’t had a day off in 25 years, but I never begrudge the horses.”
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