Saving horses is their calling

With hay prices as high as $12 a bale, cattle auction pens fill up each week with horses that have been deemed too expensive to keep.

One such horse, rescued by a couple in Oroville, recently became a companion animal for an 8-year-old girl disabled by juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

The horse, named Mya, and the story soon will be featured on a new Animal Planet cable television program, "Petfinder."

Though the episode's focus is on Star Carless, the little girl in Fullerton for whom horseback riding is a health benefit, the couple in Oroville — founders of NorCal Equine Rescue — hope the episode will call a bit of attention to their cause.

That cause includes the purchase and rehabilitation of unwanted horses, and the business of finding them new homes.

"We raise money to buy horses just before slaughter," explains co-founder Tawnee Preisner, 23. She and her husband Jason Preisner, 28, and a handful of regular volunteers work to tame and train the horses in preparation for adoption.

The purpose?

"Just to get these horses in a better situation," she says.

On a recent weekday, she makes her way across part of the 10-acre patch of woods and mud that she and her husband bought in January 2007. The property, along with 10 leased acres and an adjoining spread they use for riding, comprises the territory upon which the Preisners run their nonprofit operation.

Tawnee, the daughter of horse breeders, started her rescue mission at age 18, when a compulsion to save a single horse at the auction block morphed into a lifelong calling.

A year later, she and Jason — newly wed — rescued and found homes for 25 slaughterhouse-bound horses. The following year, 47.

In their fourth year, they rescued and found homes for 59 horses. Last year, they more than quadrupled their previous record, with 254 four-legged Cinderella stories.

Most of the adopted horses go to homes in California, Nevada or Oregon, but very few are local, according to the Preisners.

One went as far away as North Carolina.

In addition to 34 currently adoptable horses who are munching hay scattered among the trees or socializing in a nearby pasture, a handful of misfit animals occupy a cluster of pens and an adjoining field.

Four small, white ponies were part of a wild herd the Preisners purchased in Ukiah to prevent their transport for slaughter. A blind horse who belongs to the couple sticks close to the fence.

In one of the sheltered pens, a short, misshapen creature named Dotty sticks her cartoonish head through the bars for a treat.

The 2-foot-tall miniature horse, whose original owner fell ill and could no longer care for her, suffers from dwarfism.

"Her ears are too short, her head's too big, her barrel's too wide, her rump's too small and her legs are twisted," says Tawnee Preisner. "So she's our mascot."

Dotty is taken on fundraising missions around Butte, Yuba and Sutter counties.

"She's a little diva," says Teresa Smith, a volunteer from Marysville. "And she has an attitude."

The Preisners rely on volunteer help for just about everything, including hoof care. A local farrier keeps all the horses shod, gratis.

And sometimes those who volunteer also are adoptees.

Kimberly Orozco, 14, is in charge of caring for Dotty and some of her neighbors in what is fondly called "the mare motel."

In exchange, Kimberly will soon own a rescued horse called Luvinstuff.

Her family cannot afford boarding fees or feed, so the horse lover said she will continue working at NorCal Equine Rescue to pay those expenses.

And Tawnee Preisner will continue to mentor her to train, ride, and care for her horse.

"She taught me everything I know about it so far," says Kimberly.

"Petfinder," episode one, aired Saturday on Animal Planet. A date has not been set for the episode that features Mya.

Contact reporter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com