Dear Remi-
Welcome to your new life. They often say here that it’s not heaven but one of the closest places to it but I think it’s actually Heaven. We get everything we need and most of the things we want (I still haven’t figured out how to make them give me more treats. Maybe you can figure that out?), and we get to be a part of a really cool thing: helping the young humans find their hope again.
Hope. That’s a word you’re going to learn over these next few days.
I know it’s hard to trust right now, you’ve been let down for a lot of years. Hope betrayed you that first time your owner didn’t bring you your usual grain. It betrayed you when your feet started hurting and the farrier no longer came, and when your teeth started falling out so you couldn’t eat what little grass was in your pasture. So it’s understandable that you’re afraid to trust hope now that you’re suddenly in this place where you have food and water and people’s hands are soft. But I promise, it won’t betray you any longer. These people here, they know the author of Hope, so they know how to teach us to trust Hope.
I understand what it was like, my old owner neglected me, didn’t feed me, and betrayed me. It’s hard to trust Hope once that you’ve been betrayed by it so I thought I’d tell you some ways you can learn to trust Hope:
1) Yesterday four of the volunteers gave you a bath: it probably wasn’t too much fun because you had a lot of rain rot on your back, but that’s one way you can learn to trust Hope: they will take care of your wounds and gently help to heal them.
2) You know how the other night a couple of the human fillies braided your mane? You probably haven’t had that done before, but that’s one way that the younger humans like to show us they love us.
3) Meals: so… I know you want to eat all of that yummy alfalfa right away. It’s SOOO good and when you don’t have it for so long you just want to eat all of it because you never know if you’ll get it again. But you know how they’ve been coming out and giving you tiny bits every three hours of the day and night? They’ll slowly start to increase it and eventually you will get to eat as much as you can. They told me that if they were to give me as much as I wanted right away it could have actually caused my frail body to shut down. They’ve probably told you that too. I don’t understand why that is, but I know that they made good on their promise that I’d never go hungry again and I know they’ll do that for you, too.
4) The equine dentist will come- that is by far the weirdest thing ever, but you can eat better after so it’s worth it. The vet, well, he’s not fun, but they tell me it keeps me from getting sick so….? Definitely not fun but this is one of those things where you just gotta trust the people helping you heal.
5) And your feet, goodness, they said you had some of the worst they’ve seen and hadn’t been taken care of in quite a while. It’s boring and you have to learn a lot of patience when the farrier comes but over time they help give you a good foundation in your feet so you can run and play and enjoy life with all of us, your new brothers.
Speaking of brothers…. we’re your herd now! Welcome to the herd!! We may buck and kick and bite and annoy each other sometimes, but we always look out for each other, make sure each other’s safe, and we have a lot of fun together. We play and enjoy all the yummy grass we want, and they feed us every day with all the funny-tasting supplements we need. But the coolest thing? The coolest thing is that we get to meet lots of young humans who were just like us, neglected, abused, forgotten, abandoned, scared, sold, and needing to meet Hope.
Remember Hope? That’s who we get to introduce them to! That’s now our job. When they meet Hope they get to meet the author of Hope- the humans call Him, Jesus. He’s who is going to be riding on our back one day. But until then, it’s our job to help introduce as many people to Hope as we can because we met Hope.
So welcome to the herd, Remi.
Love,
Joseph
ps. they named you well, Redemption, or “Remi” for short. I love it!
Joseph was rescued on March 12th, 2019 from an auction in Middle Tennessee. Now he is a permanent ranch resident, faithful session horse, and the official greeting committee of Freedom Reigns Ranch. To read Joseph's Journey click here
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