Five years later our experience in Italy was coming to an end. I was preparing papers and passports for my family and animals to move back to the United States. We were finally back in the U.S when I received a phone call from abroad. Quantana had been stolen out of her pasture in the middle of the night. How does someone steal a horse?
Looking back, I was a baby lamb, surrounded by a pack of wolves. Quantana had super hero qualities with tons of potential in the show jumping world. Every week riders inquired if she was for sale, but I refused all offers. There was no price I would entertain. For me, she was my loving grey mare and I would never sell her. When we relocated back to the United States I was forced to leave my horses and two dogs behind temporarily with someone I thought was my friend. Animal travel had been suspended because of dangerously high weather temperatures.
Two months later Quantana had been stolen and my dogs had been left to fend for themselves. I immediately returned to Italy and found them emaciated! I had contacted the authorities, but to no avail. No one was interested in helping me and I felt the police knew more than they were willing to say. Suddenly, I didn’t feel safe in the country I had lived in for the past five years. I spent two days riding over the hillsides of Formello and Bracciano, talking with locals, asking if anyone saw a grey mare. “My friend” continued to tell me the gypsies took her for meat sales. I couldn’t believe him. In Italy, grey horses rarely went to slaughter!
When I returned to America I experienced serious depression trying to transition to being back after twelve years abroad with four children, a stolen horse and two traumatized dogs who had become aggressive enough that they couldn’t be trusted around other animals. I felt overwhelmingly sad until I met a woman from Equine Angels Rescue Sanctuary (EARS) in Connecticut who asked me to help with her rescue. She turned my world around! I was back in the saddle and had a new mission in life.
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Horses that pass the test travel north to the Cape to work with the children and young adults with disabilities at Cranberry Sunset Farm
Rein Photography