Springwood Sanctuary
Rhia - The Mystical Herd
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Rhia is a beautiful 16.2hh dark bay thoroughbred mare. She is 15 this year - her birthday is 29th May 2009. Rhia has lived with her herdmates at Springwood for four years - she came to live with us in June 2000. It is my honour to care for this majestic, sensitive and gentle horse.
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Rhia's past life:
Rhia was sadly bred for racing, kept by a leading racehorse owner and trainer and then dumped in a field along with several other horses when her injuries prevented her from being of any use to him. She had a bad accident during racing and still has scars on her hind legs and muscular skeletal problems as a result. Rhia and her herd mates had all been abandoned and the landowner wanted them out of his field, so horrifically - but very sadly, not unusually - they were all due to be sold at auction for meat. The local community found out about this and frantically searched for people to save them. Genna at Coppershell Animal Rescue (https://www.coppershellanimalrescue.org/) was contacted with just a day to go before the auction. Although Coppershell didn't have the facilities for horses, Genna saw the desperation of the situation and rescued them all immediately - trusting that she would find homes for them as soon as possible. My heartfelt enormous gratitude goes out to Genna for saving their lives that day. Genna quickly found safe, unridden, companion homes for most of the horses and ponies - except for Rhia. As ex-racehorses have a bad reputation for being flighty, strong, dominant, quick to react and often aggressive, they are very hard to find homes for. With everyone else gone, Rhia was beside herself with fear and stress and proving the reputation correct in every sense. A friend of Springwood's put Genna in touch with us and we agreed to rescue Rhia immediately. Having already rescued several ex-racehorses we knew that what she needed was understanding, herd mates and freedom of choice in order to begin to heal from her past trauma. Genna initially sent me a video of Rhia before we spoke - it was of her mutual grooming with another horse - Cal - who was a similar size and colour to Rhia. Cal was another one of the nine who had been so cruelly dumped and abandoned. I felt strongly that Rhia needed to be kept with her bonded herd mate Cal and so I let Genna know that I didn't want to split these two horses up and I would give them both a home here. To my dismay I discovered that Cal had already been rehomed only the day before to a ridden home as that was the only place Genna could find for him - this left Rhia alone and in a state of utter panic without him. Somehow the universe heard our prayer and within a couple of hours Genna called to say that Cal had "failed a vet test" that the new guardian was returning him to Coppershell! We put out a plea to our lovely community of sponsors, friends, patrons and volunteers and we were so massively grateful to receive almost enough financial support to care for them both for their first year of being at Springwood as well as monthly sponsorship pledges to help towards costs on an ongoing basis. We were also offered transport by two lovely ladies Jackie and Michelle who so kindly and generously drove their horsebox to collect them from Wiltshire and drove them to our sanctuary which at that time was in Sussex. My endless gratitude to you all!
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Rhia's life now:
Rhia and Cal arrived at Springwood Sanctuary (when we were based in Shillinglee, Sussex) and it was so fascinating to see their introductions to the rest of the herd in a huge 25 acre meadow. It really emulated horses meeting in the wild. They stuck closely together and one by one the original herd came and introduced themselves, retreated and then gently grazed nearby. A few of the herd took Rhia and Cal for a canter around the perimeter of the land and incredibly peacefully they all became a very bonded herd, all looking after each other in such a beautiful way. A few months later they were all to travel together all the way to Wales when we moved the sanctuary at the end of 2020, and this they all managed with the peace and ease of knowing they were all supporting each other. Very sadly we lost our darling Cal last year after a short but severe illness. Rhia was supported by the herd as they and we all grieved him.
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Rhia has received a lot of healing for her past injuries - including Reiki, Shiatsu, Cranial Sacral, Osteopathy and McTimoney treatments and is benefiting from them all. Thank you to everyone who is supporting her in this way. Her range of movement is great, but she needs ongoing care to keep her muscular skeletal system healthy and her body pain free. She was very quick to react and did not like to be touched at all when she first came to live with us. She would lash out with her hind legs if she felt at all worried - which was quite often. This was quite an effective way of keeping humans away from her! She was petrified of the hoof trimmer - even just the sight of his trimming tools started her shaking and sweating profusely - goodness knows what this beautiful horse had been subjected to in the past. She soon learnt to trust that she would be listened to, given autonomy over her own body and would be treated with kindness, love and utmost respect. Now days she will back me into the corner of the barn to have a massage in exactly the right spot ... it took quite a bit for me to trust that this behaviour wasn't going to end up in her previously usual kicking out, but the confidence we both have in each other has been hard earned and enables us both to be very trusting and vulnerable with each other. It is really lovely and so rewarding to be able to connect with Rhia in such a deeply healing, loving and peaceful way. She will even back into many other humans these days asking for a massage, a scratch or just to share some mindful moments. It gives me so much joy to know that her past trauma has been released and she is a thriving, happy member of the Mysties.
If you'd like to sponsor Rhia to help us with the costs of caring for her, we'd love to have you join our sponsorship family here at Springwood. Thank you.
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