Rhode Island Horses get a Helping Hand

NORTH KINGSTOWN, RI – Winston Churchill once famously said that there’s something about the outside of a horse that’s good for the inside of a human.

He’s right, of course, as anyone who’s spent time with horses will attest. Sometimes, though, well-intentioned people buy horses and later discover that the cost and commitment to caring for them properly is beyond their means. But it’s not like you can just drop a horse off at your nearest animal shelter. So, where does one turn when they can no longer care for their horse?

In Rhode Island, they head deep into the woods of North Kingstown. There, they find a remarkable woman named Deidre Sharp, who runs her own equine rescue farm on her several acres of land. Deidre holds down a regular job as a police dispatcher and must lean on a small team of dedicated volunteers to help her maintain the farm, where some 20 or so horses currently reside. Many of these gentle animals have experience lives of hardship and abuse at the hands of humans with whom they’ve come in contact or by whom they previously were owned. But Deidre rescued them, and now they live out their lives in peace with their spacious new home and in harmony with one another.

It’s truly heartwarming to see how loving, trusting, and affectionate all these horses are, even with strangers, despite having such unpleasant memories of people in their pasts. They are forgiving creatures, willing to give everyone a chance to treat them with proper love and respect.

We first visited Deidre’s farm, called Horse Play, in the summer of 2014. A few weeks later, we returned with a carload of food – enough to feed all the horses there for a week. Just before a string of blizzards during the historic New England winter of 2015 arrived this past February, we returned to Horse Play to offer another week’s worth of food. We made our third donation of food to Horse Play just recently this summer.

Deidre and her volunteers need more than food, however. They could use an upgrade to some of their existing facilities, as well as some new equipment and supplies to take even better care of their horses. Nutmeg has committed to helping Horse Play however we can in the future.  ETS

Are you already a horse lover or want to be introduced to horses for the first time? Let Nutmeg know! We’d be happy to arrange a visit with you to Horse Play to meet Deidre and her horses and see how your donation to Nutmeg is being put to good use.