Bits of hope for youth and horses on the ranch

Posted by Nancy Guenther Chapman on February 6th, 2010 at 2:30 am

Reaghan Park, 12, and Tori Ham­rick, 12, cud­dle with Lit­tle Miss.

Bar­ney, a horse at the Bit Of Hope Ranch, came in third place over­all at a South Sara­sota County 4-H show last weekend.

Darned good for a horse with his shoes on backwards.

Shoes are the least of his hand­i­caps.  When Bar­ney came to the ranch last June, his state was hor­rific: he was just skin and bones; he had no hooves — some­thing akin to hav­ing no fin­ger­nails — so he couldn’t stand for more than a minute; he had been lying in one place pee­ing on him­self for so long that his badly burned skin was peel­ing on his legs and stomach.

“We really didn’t expect him to live, let alone ever be sound again,” said Suzanne Park, who oper­ates the ranch.

Chalk up another suc­cess to the reha­bil­i­ta­tive spirit at the ranch, where kids and horses alike ben­e­fit from Park’s giv­ing spirit. She didn’t set out to help horses, it kind of just hap­pened. She didn’t set out to help kids either. That kind of just hap­pened, too.

Alex Ortiz, a fifth-grader, plays with Petey at the Bit of Hope Ranch.

“It was started about the horses, but now it’s more about the kids,” she said.

When Park and her hus­band bought their expan­sive prop­erty on Texas Street, off Old Engle­wood Road, in the mid 1990’s, a horse “kind of came with the prop­erty. ” Think­ing that Jas­mine was lonely, Park set out to find her a com­pan­ion and quickly dis­cov­ered that there were many, many unwanted horses.

She found the horse she was look­ing for in Miami, a stan­dard bred trot­ter who was lame due to a bro­ken off nee­dle that had been left inside her to fester.

“It was just basi­cally love at first sight and the ‘calinkidink’ of it was her name is Love of a Life­time,” said Park. “That’s her reg­is­tered name, no joke.”

Soon, the other part of the Bit of Hope Ranch fell into place.

“Kids just started flow­ing in,” Park said. “Wher­ever there are horses,  kids are going to come.”

Park under­stood. She had longed for a horse when she was a child grow­ing up in Engle­wood, but it hadn’t happened.

Alex Schlap­man, 11, tends to Simon.

“Being a native of Engle­wood and being able to be blessed to live in Engle­wood, and to be blessed with horses, I felt the Lord telling me to share it with the kids who were like me when I was grow­ing up,” she said. “We prayed a lot about that, because I it’s not always a pleas­ant things to open up your home to kids. There’s a lot of respon­si­bil­ity that comes with it. But the Lord has always pro­vided, if it’s been a need for kids it’s been taken care of, if it’s been a need for horses it’s been taken care of. So it’s some­times a tough road to hoe, but it’s def­i­nitely well rewarded.”

Park devel­oped a sys­tem:  Chil­dren who vol­un­teer to take care of the horses are rewarded with an hour of rid­ing les­son for every four hours of work. She has a “solid core” of 25 chil­dren who come around, and some­times has as many as 50, although they aren’t always working.

As long as they are old enough to walk, they are wel­come. Park said the young ones usu­ally come with their older sib­lings, but they can push a broom or pull weeds.

One enthu­si­as­tic par­tic­i­pant is 11-year-old Alex Schlap­man, who would move into a horse stall if she could. She’s there every day, or as much as her par­ents will let her be.

“I’ve been rid­ing since I was 3,” Alex said, although she didn’t begin at the Bit of Hope Ranch.

Wednes­day, she han­dled the horses like an expert, clean­ing out Simon’s hooves and rush­ing to guide excited horses into stalls for their evening meal.

Ethan Bow­er­sox, 12, gets a rid­ing les­son from Michae­lah Park, 13.

Mean­while, 12-year old Ethan Bow­er­sox got a rid­ing les­son from Park’s daugh­ter Michealah, 13. Sev­eral teenagers rode in cir­cles, through the trees in the pas­ture that many of the horses call home. Other chil­dren sim­ply played in an adja­cent field.

Later, they all piled into the ranch’s bus to go to Taco Bell, a Wednes­day ritual.

Another favorite expe­di­tion is to go get ice cream in the ranch’s new cart, pulled by Samp­son, a light draft horse Park described as a Percheron cross. Samp­son, like every other horse on the prop­erty, has been reha­bil­i­tated, but he is one of the few who get to stay as long as Park can keep him.

She keeps 10 to 12 horses on the prop­erty, and has adopted out 40 reha­bil­i­tated horses since 1998.

“They’re mostly used as pets,” Park said. “We try to make sure the horse is ‘Grandma safe’ so any­body can ride it.  That pretty much assures it’s going to have a good future. Even if  it’s adop­tive home doesn’t keep it for­ever it’s still going to go to a good home. Because a horse that’s ride­able is fairly easy to place in a home. But a horse who’s nasty and sour and noth­ing but a lawn orna­ment, they don’t want them and (the horse is) not as happy. Horses like to have jobs, kind of like dogs. They’re very highly social, they want to be useful.”

Times are tough, Park said.

Horses come look­ing for their evening meal.

“We’re over­whelmed,” she said. “We have horses in fos­ter homes. We just can’t take them all.”

Plus, the recent freeze made graz­ing impos­si­ble for a while, as the grass is dead. The ranch goes through one $60 bale of hay a day.

The enter­prise is sup­ported in part by the fam­ily busi­ness, Land­scape Main­te­nance Ser­vices. The non-profit ranch is mainly funded by dona­tions; spon­sor­ships for indi­vid­ual horses are avail­able. Park is also thank­ful for Carol Turpin, who runs the recently opened Bit of Hope Ranch Thrift Store in the Engle­wood Square Shop­ping Cen­ter at 499 S. Indi­ana Ave.

“That’s been a big help,” Park said.

Horses on the prop­erty include Jack, who is almost over his food-related aggres­sion. Park attrib­utes his behav­ior to the fact that he was starv­ing when he was rescued.

Then there’s Mercy, a 9-year-old thor­ough­bred who was sim­ply dumped because she wasn’t a run­ner.  She was severely mal­nour­ished and was very sick when she came to the ranch.

“Now she’s one of our best lit­tle hunter jumpers,” Park said. “Any­body can ride her, she’s so patient and kind.”

Suzanne Park points out a hole in Barney’s hoof, show­ing how lit­tle hoof he had when he came to the Bit of Hope Ranch. She could put her fin­gers all the way through his hoof then.

Jack will find a new home, but Mercy stays. So does Bar­ney, who wears his shoes back­wards because he really doesn’t have a toe to nail them to.

“He will prob­a­bly wear them back­wards another six months,” Park said.

Nev­er­the­less, the recov­er­ing horse is in train­ing to do the annual Cracker Trail Ride at the end of the month.  If he’s up to it, he’ll walk 120 miles in seven days, cross­ing the state in a re-creation of the his­toric cat­tle drives.

Bar­ney has impec­ca­ble man­ners, as he was already edu­cated when he came to the ranch.

“How could some­one let him get in that shape in the first place blows my mind,” Park said. “He’s just a sweet­heart.  In top notch in his prime he was worth eight to nine grand; he’s got pretty good papers and his train­ing is impeccable.”

She said a “pretty well-known quarter-horse trainer” inquired about Barney’s avail­abil­ity last week­end at the show.  She said Bar­ney wasn’t for sale.

“He deserves to stay here with the kids who have reha­bil­i­tated him,” she said. “I’m not going to say for life but for a long time.  I think the kids that have put all the work into him deserve the reward. So he’ll stay as long as he has a job. If and when he needs to move on we’ll find him appro­pri­ate work elsewhere.”

For more infor­ma­tion, go to http://www.bitofhoperanch.com/

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