Halfway house for horses

By Art Carey, Staff Writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer filed a story entitled “A Halfway House for Sick and Injured Horses”.”

Carey opens his story with:

On Sunday, Nicole Roberts is a slacker. She rises at 5:30, a whole hour and a half later than her usual wake-up time – 4 a.m. She tries to retire by 8:30 p.m., but many nights, she rouses herself frequently to administer medications. She dutifully treks to the unheated barn, no matter how foul the weather, and she stays there until her work is done, no matter how bitter the cold.

Over the years, she has helped foal a few horses, and on nights when she’s waiting for a mare to give birth, she is too alert to sleep. Short, shallow naps are the best she can hope for.

She has been ministering to horses for 28 years, 19 at her present location, a former dairy farm in Toughkenamon, Chester County, a few miles west of Kennett Square. Hers is truly a full-time job – 24 hours a day, seven days a week. She can’t remember when she last took a real vacation.

“An afternoon off would be like a vacation,” says Roberts, 44, without a trace of regret or self-pity. “One thing with horses: They can’t do it themselves. Someone has to take care of them. People send us their horses because they trust us.”

Read full story at http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/16488296.html. More photograph by Inquirer Staff Photograher Michael S. Wirtz, including the one below:

Nicole Roberts, who for decades has run a “lay-up” farm for sick, injured and aged horses in Chester County, applies a splint wrap to the leg of an animal with a ligament injury.
Photograph by Inquirer Staff Photographer, Michael S. Wirtz