Paco is Coming Home Soon
September 9, 2010, page 12.....

Paco is one of the lucky ones. He is headed to a loving home in Charlotte, instead of to slaughter in Canada.
Amy Wright is adopting Paco, who was given up by his owners and put up for auction. She learned about him through an organization called Another Chance for Horses (ac4h.com).
The current recession has led to heartbreaking decisions by many families to give up their horses. Many end up at auctions where the main buyers are called “kill brokers” who ship the animals to Canada and Mexico where they are butchered for food, which is illegal in the United States. But it is not illegal here to buy and transport them for that purpose.
AC4H has an arrangement with one of the brokers to find alternatives for the horses they buy. They are given only about a week to find a rescuer able to pay to bail out the horse. Photos and videos of the horses are put on the website.
After learning about the AC4H (through a friend on FaceBook), Amy Wright watched the website for a couple of weeks until she saw the little pinto with blue eyes, reminding her of Hidalgo in the movie. She knew when she saw him that she wanted to rescue him, “In my heart it seemed the right thing to do.”
Paco is the name she’s using for him now. Born in Wisconsin, he has papers from the National Pinto Registry, which identify him as Meadow Wind Dream Catcher.
Amy has visited Paco several times and says he is “very dear, with a sweet personality.” He is currently in quarantine in Saratoga, New York, recovering from a case of strangles picked up from other horses in the same predicament. While waiting for his arrival, Amy is studying natural horsemanship with Stephanie Lockhart and Nana Boffa (see article on next page), which she says is “so different” from the way she learned to work with horses when growing up. With natural horsemanship one learns to “respect and honor their intelligence” rather than “making the horse do what you want.”

-nw