Bridge Called Hope by Kim Meeder

glanced up to see that her eyes were so rolled in my direction that much of the white sclera surrounding her eye was visible. As her eye held mine, I rotated slightly so that she could only see one of my eyes. For most horses, to be engaged with both eyes of another being is considered stalking, while to be watched with only one eye is merely observing. I continued to watch.
    Her white-rimmed eye held mine.
    There, like a distant beacon winking within the frigid, drab light, I could see it … an ember within her was still burning. Although her body was very near death … her will was not. She was still fighting. As horrific as she appeared, she had not yet given up hope … and neither would I.
    Troy’s hand gently squeezed my shoulder as he joined me and whispered into my ear, “She’s the one. Of all these horses, she is the ‘least of the least’ … the one that needs help the most. Truly, she is why we are here … when she is able, she is the one that will come home with us.”
    In silence we stood hand in hand, quietly verifying the new pact between us. A thinness in the low cloud cover allowed weak yellow shafts of sunlight to filter through. Hope was beginning to flow.

    After what seemed to many of us as some of the longest hours of our lives, two final locations were found for the horses. It was around one o’clock when the good news arrived. The lieutenant in charge gathered the volunteers together and made the long awaited announcement. The first location was in Bend, about twenty-five miles away and in close proximity to a veterinary practice. This facility would be used to house the thirty horses that were the most critically ill. The second location would be the Deschutes County Fairgrounds in Redmond, which was about forty miles away. The livestock set-up which was already there would become the perfect place to house the remaining one hundred.
    It was time for the long, dangerous process of moving the horses to begin.
    The next daunting challenge was how to safely coax primarily unhandled horses into the claustrophobic confines of a horse trailer. As with most things in life that people are passionate about, everyone had their own distinct opinions of how they thought things should be accomplished. Although most of the officers and volunteers had skill in trailering horses, few had ever experienced the unique challenges associated with attempting to move truly wild horses.
    Now that locations were determined and waiting to receive us, as a group we needed to start loading horses as quickly and safely as possible. Being unsure for so long as to even
if
we would be able to move the horses on this day, little had been organized in that direction.
    Again, no equine rescue equaling this level of danger or volume had ever been attempted before. In the volunteers’ effortsto help expedite the method of how to accomplish this monumental task, attitudes rose with tempers as the day wore on and no horses were yet loaded into the growing serpentine of waiting trailers. Everyone wanted what was best for the horses, which was ultimately to move them out of this living hell. In an effort to make this happen, the lieutenant and officers were being verbally pulled into pieces by strong personalities that fought to be heard.
    Shortly after the announcement had been made, one volunteer took it upon himself to try and load a stallion with hooves so horrifically overgrown that they curled upward and backward toward his knees like grotesque “slippers.” Although frightened, the stallion was readily trying to step up into the trailer. Yet every time the horse lifted his leg, his hoof would catch and bang on the underside of the trailer bumper. Many watched in rising hopelessness as the weakening stallion tried over and over to accomplish such a seemingly simple task. As the stallion’s strength ebbed, his sense of discouragement flowed, until in utter exhaustion he gave up completely. Everything about the