Pet Me! Magazine™ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013
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maciated, looking like a skeleton instead of a horse, Lucky walked painfully into his stall. The owner had stopped feeding him, and the former race horse had no recourse but to survive on fallen leaves. It was bad enough that Lucky had started life as a race horse living in a 10-foot by 10-foot stall, worked incessantly, drugged and doped. “He falls down when we ride him,” said Lucky’s owner over the phone to Esta Bernstein, CEO of Saffyre Sanctuary. “I don’t know what to do.” The woman had called Bernstein to persuade her to take the horse into the sanctuary. In disgust, Bernstein told her to call a vet immediately and hung up on the woman. “Then it (conscience) hit me like the proverbial sledge hammer and I picked up the phone, called her back and told her that I would take him,” says Bernstein, the founder of Saffyre. Four months later the horse, renamed Lakota, has gained back his weight and is happy and healthy. This is due to the efforts of Bernstein’s one-of-a-kind horse rehabilitation program located on the Summer Hawk Ranch in Lake View Terrace, California. “Neglect and ignorance are the worse sorts of abuse. These animals suffer, so we bring them here and we treat them as beings worthy of respect. We take care of them physically and
spiritually,” says Bernstein. Counter to the belief of many equestrian experts, Bernstein says that horses have the same capacity for love as do humans. “Everyone wants to be loved and respected—this includes all species,” says Bernstein. “We talk to them, explain to them what we have to do. We ask their permission when we ride them. We spoil them.” Bernstein says the horses respond to them out of love not fear. “We spend mountains of time on ground work before we gain the trust of these abused animals,” says Bernstein. “They let us ride because it is useful work for them and a way for them to return the love we have given them.” Lead Saffyre volunteer, John Navalesi, a veteran horseman, agrees. Navalesi has changed his ideas about horses. “A horse is a mirror of you. I’m not training these horses, I’m being trained,” he smiles. “You have to understand their mentality. They can reason, cooperate, and communicate,” says Bernstein. “Horses are going to react to your reactions,” she says. “Once a very uptight friend of mine came to visit and one of the horses closed up, acted uptight and would not interact. He switched to his right brain side and became reactive.
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Durina was an aggressive, neurotic Dressage horse who had been shown day and night seven days a week. The horse bit and wore a path around her stall until Bernstein gained the horse’s confidence and trust through Saffyre Sanctuary’s extensive physical and mental therapy program.
Pet Me! Magazine™
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