Susan Sheridan, president of the Bay State Equine Rescue (BSER) here in Massachusetts, has told me that BSER routinely changes the names of the horses who come into its care, hoping that by doing so, they may help to extinguish the horses' painful pasts, and signal to them that they are about to start a new, and happier, chapter of their lives.  My own mare was rescued by BSER from an auction where she would almost certainly have been sold for slaughter.  She was in pitiful physical condition, having been used for years to produce foals as part of a Premarin program.  When she was welcomed into the rescue, Susan gave her the beautiful name, "Hayley," to let her know that she was safe, and would never again be subject to ill treatment.

In telling the story of the farmyard denizens who live and thrive in the warm embrace of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary (CAS) in Saugerties, New York, Kathy Stevens never set out to write a book about animal communication.  But in a very real sense, that's what she did.

 

Where the Blind Horse Sings: Love and Healing at an Animal Sanctuary  chronicles not just the communication that is possible between humans and animals, but perhaps just as poignantly, the silent knowingness that passes among animals themselves:  unspoken but breathtakingly real.

 

It was on a cold November evening, that Rambo, the belligerent ram with a bad rapsheet, saved the lives of two turkeys:

 

            Rambo charged up to me, stopped dead, looked up at me with his great

            yellow eyes, and bleated.  "Something's wrong," he said-no matter that

            what he said was "baaahh," because his communication was perfectly and

            instantly clear.

 

It turned out that the turkeys, Chuck and Cliff, had been accidentally left outside in the freezing weather, and may have perished if not for Rambo's insistence that something was amiss.  Kathy pondered:

 

            What had just happened?  So much was revealed in that single

            communication.  That a sheep was aware that the turkeys were

            outside was impressive enough.  That he figured out how to tell

            a human blew me away.  But most astoundingly, Rambo had just

            shown concern for two animals of a different species and had

            known that I would help them.

   

CAS is a place where abused, abandoned, and unloved animals can come to heal and bask in the sunlight of kindness and acceptance.  Typical of them was Buddy, the blind Appaloosa who is the namesake of this wonderful book:

            Buddy had been housed in a small, irregularly shaped barbed-wire pen.

            Every time he moved, a barb would gouge the flesh of his chest, his flank,

            his neck.  Eventually, for safety's sake, he'd stopped moving.  For the two

            weeks prior to coming to us, he just stood in one spot, head hung low, even

            refusing to eat.

But Buddy blossomed in the care of CAS, and soon showed evidence of his brave heart and passion to do normal horse things.  Kathy describes their shared exhilaration as Buddy progressed to the point that he could gallop through fields and traverse wooded trails, as she laughed and cried and rejoiced with him, all the way.

Many of the farm creatures roaming free at the Catskill Animal Sanctuary had originally been bred for food, and Kathy points out the shocking truth that for pigs and chickens and cows, the laws governing their slaughter are more stringent than the regulations addressing their daily care. 

Inevitably, there are days when it is time for the people at the Sanctuary to bid a sad farewell to the animals who have become beloved friends.  In stark contrast to the way that their lives would have ended in the frightening, bloody corridors of a slaughterhouse, the creatures at CAS are gently held and kissed good-bye as they take their final breaths. 

I cried as I read of the dignified death of the gentle Holstein steer, Samson:

            The huge syringe of barbiturate emptied into him, and then the second

            remarkable thing happened.  Samson turned around, looked as deeply

            into my eyes as any living thing before or since, and licked my face.  Then

            he licked it again, and again, and again.  Over and over as he was dying, the

            cow who had finally known love was, I believe, saying thank you.  He was,

            I believe, saying, "I love you, too," and he was, I believe, saying good-bye.

Kathy Stevens may not consider herself to be an animal communicator, but as Where the Blind Horse Sings makes clear, she understands a language of the heart that needs no translation.