Long-Lost Friends

Have you ever met someone and felt instantly as if you’d known them forever? Consider Venus. She came to Best Friends so fearful that if you even looked at her, she would start shaking. She was also skinny. This girl had had a rough life, including a stint at a feedlot, before she was rescued by Wasatch Humane (a group out of Bountiful, Utah).

Venus came to Best Friends because the cold weather up north wasn’t working out too well for her. But her progress was slow. Even though the horse staff spent plenty of time with Venus, and offered everything but peanut butter and pickle sandwiches to help her gain weight, nothing really worked. She was seemingly down for the count. Hard to make a horse improve if she doesn’t want to.

Enter Ginger the horse. Ginger also had had a tough go of things. She arrived 200 pounds underweight and had a host of other problems to boot. (Because of all those creaks and groans, Ginger became a Guardian Angel horse.) Not long after Ginger’s arrival, she and Venus were introduced.

These two skinny grandma horses then became instant and inseparable best friends. Almost immediately, they developed more self-confidence and began helping each other out. Venus started eating more, and so did Ginger. As staff worked with Ginger, Venus started to inch toward people and lose her fear of them. Venus finally seemed to wake up from a really long sleep and started noticing the world around her. These days, they live with a couple of other rickety old female horses who together comprise the "Vigilante Grandmas," but Ginger and Venus still form a special group of their own. Sometimes one good friend is all you need.

Written by David Dickson. Photos by Kellie Ohrtman.