"Where ever man has left his footprint in his long ascent from barbarism to civilization, we will find the hoofprint of a horse beside it."
-John Trotwood Moore
The pet websites I work for have been busy publishing requests for assistance, donations, and foster homes for the animals of people affected by Hurricane Katrina. All the volunteers on our sites and our sites' users have responded with great compassion, but I've been especially impressed and moved by the kindness and generosity of the horse community.
I passed along a request for help I received from the United States Equine Federation to the mailing list for Hoofbeats, the HorseHobbyist.com email newsletter, and got an overwhelming response. People are offering not just space for displaced horses and farm animals, but room in homes and trailers for their human families, too. Several offered to take their own trailers and drive across multiple states to go pick up horses.
I know it's not politically very smart to spend too much time talking about helping animals when people are in trouble, but there is something about empathy that, once it gets going, really doesn't know how to stop. You might start out caring only about cats and dogs and ponies, but the boundaries of kindness don't end at the species line.
Animal make me a better person. And it's clear that horses, with their great hearts and capacity for enormous forgiveness, make their owners better people too.
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