Children sometimes fuss about cleaning up their rooms. But our Anna’s Kindness volunteers had no issue cleaning up the ‘rooms’ of the rescued horses at Starry Skies Equine Rescue and Sanctuary.
Even when it meant shoveling up poop.
Nearly a dozen Anna’s Kindness volunteers spend a beautiful Saturday morning ankle deep in mud and manure, shoveling up horse poop in the lean-to’s in the Starry Skies pens. The lean-tos provide a shady respite for the horses, but notsomuch when these ‘rooms’ are littered with dirt and droppings. So our middle schoolers split into two groups and did some serious spring cleaning in the lean-to’s, raking and shoveling the poop into buckets, which they then carried out to the back of the ranch to dump.
The result? A nice clean room that would make the horses’ mothers proud.
After our volunteer ‘poop patrol’ had cleaned the lean-tos, they were rewarded with the opportunity to groom the horses, many of whom were shedding and needed a thorough brushing (the fur was flyin’). The highlight of grooming was Pax, a draft horse which was not sociable … in other words, he didn’t like adults to be near him. But Pax — to the stunned surprise of the Starry Skies staff — took a liking to our volunteers and allowed the middle schoolers to surround him with their brushes, love, and affection.
A breakthrough moment for the large previously reclusive draft horse.
Thanks to our volunteers Slauson Middle School’s Lex Bassett-Kennedy, Forsythe’s Pavel Hristov, Huck Amick, Eleanor Fox, Lydia Helfrich, Natalie Shellhaas, Sophia Ricci, and Timothy O’Connell; Clague’s Marin Pierce, Tappan’s Tessa Rober and Colette Riggs, and Eleanor Paulsen. And a special thank you to Bridget and Starry Skies for allowing us to volunteer with your wonderful rescue.
#randomactsofanna
