Woman turns rescued horse’s life around
Published: January 15, 2007
Sue DeBartoli grinned as she petted her chestnut-colored mustang named Spirit.
The rural Rankin woman brushed down the mare’s mane as she led Spirit to the barn door. Spirit whinnied when it slid open. The horse pranced out into the sunshine of a cool Vermilion County morning. She turned her head toward her new owner.
“You’re a good girl,” DeBartoli said as the mustang trotted around. Then the Rankin woman wiped away a tear.
The sight of Spirit running with the wind with a full belly, a new home and a new owner was a far cry from a year ago, when the filly and her brother were left for dead on a bone-dry field in rural Bement.
Spirit and her brother were wild mustangs who had been adopted from the Federal Bureau of Land Management in February 2005 and placed in a field outside Bement. But last November, two women made frantic calls to Linda Hewerdine, the founder of a horse rescue organization in Dewey. The women told Hewerdine that the two horses had no food or water and that one was dead.
When Hewerdine arrived in Bement a few hours later, she found Spirit, who was no more than 14 months old, in distress. The other mustang, who was about 2, was dead on the ground.
“The horse was very thin, and it appeared it had been left there to die,” Hewerdine said. “I could tell the male horse had thrashed around in the dirt before it collapsed.”
After Hewerdine took photos and reported the situation to the Illinois Department of Agriculture, state officials gave the owner 12 hours to provide Spirit with food or water before the horse would be seized. When Hewerdine returned to the field a day later, she said conditions had not improved.
The dead horse was buried, and the filly was taken to Hewerdine’s ranch in Dewey. The owner was later arrested on charges of aggravated cruelty to an animal. In March, he was placed on probation for 24 months and ordered to pay a $750 fine, plus court costs. In addition, he was ordered to undergo counseling and is prohibited from owning any livestock for the next two years.
The story touched the heart of DeBartoli when she read about it in The (Champaign) News-Gazette.
“I’ve always loved horses since I was a little girl, and I owned a horse in high school,” said DeBartoli, 48. “I gave up the horse when I went away to college, but I never forgot the great companionship you can have with a horse.”
After reading about the horses, DeBartoli decided to volunteer at the rescue facility. Her first sight of Spirit broke her heart.
“Spirit was all skin and bones; you could tell she hadn’t eaten much for a very long time,” she said. “She had a bunch of burrs stuck in her mane. There was no life to her at all; she just stood there.”
DeBartoli said it was difficult for her to approach the horse that first week.
“After the way she had been treated, Spirit was real terrified of people at first,” she said. “She cowered in the back of the corral. I don’t think she knew what carrots and apples were. So I began to gingerly feed her and we slowly became friends.”
She also began to feed the mustang grain and hay. DeBartoli said it was a good feeling knowing she was needed and wanted by the mustang. “Spirit and I are a lot alike,” she said. “We both need each other.”
DeBartoli officially adopted Spirit in late June. She also sold her house in Champaign and bought a farmhouse and five acres of land east of Rankin. “Even though it is 40 minutes from Champaign, I don’t care,” she said. “It’s where I can give Spirit the home she so richly deserves.”
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