Two horses who went viral on social media are safe after their owner spent nearly three months of sleepless nights keeping watch.
Noelle Lynne rescued a mare named Aurora from a horse auction in Texas. She says she instantly felt compelled to act.
"It was my first auction, and I smile as I say this, but it was absolutely horrific," Lynne said. "Aurora was one of the first horses that I saw when I got out of the car. She was eating this hay and it was moldy, and it was very sun-bleached. She turned around and I just like locked eyes on her, and I just, you know, it was almost like she told me right then, ‘I'm the horse to rescue.’"
Lynne, the founder of Karma Ranch in northern Utah, brought Aurora from Texas to the ranch. Aurora's condition was critical. Not only was the horse dangerously malnourished — she was pregnant.
"She lacked a lot of top line and muscle, which made her, I think, at the time, look more pregnant than she actually was," Lynne said. "She wasn't able to hold up her baby inside of her when she was starved."
Lynne spent 89 nights with Aurora, often staying at the barn until the early hours of the morning.
"It was honestly a lot of sitting there with her," Lynne said. "I would be up all night and then I would be at the barn for four to five hours sitting with her trying to gain her trust. She obviously fought really hard for this baby, and sacrificed her own body, her muscle, her bones, her tissue, everything."
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world followed Aurora's story on social media as Lynne waited for the horse to go into labor.
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"I had someone in, I think it was Vermont, who was wearing the t-shirt and walking around downtown, who said that someone stopped them and said, ‘I'm following Aurora too,’" Lynne said. "Having over 260,000 people around the world praying for Aurora every single night, I honestly believe that made a difference."
At 1 a.m. on June 13, Aurora gave birth to a healthy foal named Astro.
Aurora and Astro now have their happy ending. But Lynne says thousands of other horses are not so fortunate.
"Last year, over 25,000 horses were shipped to slaughter from America," Lynne said. "Currently, the border is closed to Mexico because there's a screwworm outbreak, but that doesn't mean the pipeline stops. It means right now that thousands of horses are just sitting in kill pens, and the kill pen is the last stop. It's the black market of horses, and it's been going on for a really, really long time."
According to Joanna Grossman, the equine program director at the Animal Welfare Institute, the United States currently has a "soft ban" on horse slaughter. By refusing to allocate funds to inspect slaughter facilities, those facilities cannot legally operate.
"That creates a de facto ban because if USDA can't spend money inspecting the processing of the meat, the slaughterhouse facilities, then horse meat cannot be sold legally here in the US," Grossman said. "It is legal to export them for human consumption out of the country, and that's sort of what, you know, is essentially the loophole that we're trying to close."
An amendment designed to curb the export of horses for slaughter is awaiting a congressional vote.
In the meantime, Lynne is working toward a larger vision for Karma Ranch: a sanctuary for up to 95 horses in Montana where rescued horses can live out their natural lives.
"It's kind of bittersweet because Utah is where my journey of horse rescue has begun," Lynne said. "But the exciting part about it, though, is one of my dreams about Karma Ranch is to have eight guest cabins. So, people will be able to come up and visit and stay and get to know the herd. As much as I want to heal horses, I believe that horses can truly help heal humans as well."
In the meantime, Aurora and Astro are enjoying each other’s company and entertaining horse enthusiasts online.
