|
|
|
| |
Checkout
|
Horse ambulance is start to lifelong dream Five years ago, Mikki Waring-Brown received an urgent phone call from a friend at Ember Ridge Ranch in Moss Beach. The friend owned a huge Percheron draft horse, which was unable to stand up. Waring-Brown, an experienced veterinary technician, asked her friend to trust her. Then she got busy. She contacted Star Equine veterinary services in Portola Valley, where she got hold of a heavy canvas sling. From Curley & Red's Body Shop in Half Moon Bay, she retained a tow truck. At Ember Ridge, she worked the sling around the prone horse, and, after promising the dubious tow truck driver that he would be held blameless if her idea didn't work, had him raise the horse to a standing position. The horse survived. The incident was a catalyst for Waring-Brown, a Moss Beach resident, prompting her to start a sometimes frustrating _ but ultimately triumphant _ journey to realize a secret childhood dream: to design and build a horse ambulance. "There's a (need) here that doesn't make sense to me," said Waring-Brown, a vibrant 33-year-old with cascading honey-blond hair who appears tiny beside the huge rig. "It was a big risk. But that's what I do." Waring-Brown operates Mikki's Horse Rescue from the driver's seat of her patented, state-of-the-art, 40-foot-long horse ambulance. The trailer portion itself is more than 11 feet tall and 18 feet long. To reach a downed horse, it tilts at an eight-degree angle, and a double-stroke hydraulic ram extends four feet out the back to lower a horse-size sling. The sling is made of heavy-duty canvas, steel buckles tested up to 12,000 pounds, and sheepskin padding. "It makes a really nice hammock," Waring-Brown said of the sling, which has carried horses from 800 to 1,800 pounds to the Large Animal Clinic at the University of California at Davis at fees ranging from $200 to $1,000, depending on the case. Hauled by a 1995 one-ton Ford pickup, the whole rig weighs a maximum 10,000 pounds loaded. Waring-Brown allows no one else to drive the rig when it's carrying patients. "I try to drive them like they're glass," she said. Legally, she can't use flashing red lights, so she uses her horn and hazard lights instead, she said. The trailer sports a logo she designed, the acronym H.E.A.T. (Humane Equine Ambulance Transport) with a red cross bearing the silhouette of a horse. She added that the Half Moon Bay Police Department has offered her escort service if she needs it. The rig is often the only chance for life for injured horses, Waring-Brown said. "There are a number of horses that are needlessly destroyed before we know what's the matter with them," she said. "We have a chance to make an educated decision. How can you live knowing you destroyed an animal that could have been saved if you could get it to a hospital?" Colleague Dr. Madison Seamans of Gilroy is cautiously optimistic. "It's a great innovation in our ability to move injured animals," Seamans said. "But if they're that severely injured, the chances of survival are very, very small." Of the 15 horses Waring-Brown estimates she's transported, she said 11 were saved. Without the ambulance, seven of those would have been put down on the spot, she said. The lumbering ambulance is a panacea for the one-time lonely dreamer from a troubled family who said she would get beat up at school for being "different." A Redwood City native, Waring-Brown recalled growing up in a less-than-supportive atmosphere. Born with crossed eyes and dyslexia, she struggled in school and was taunted by her peers. Eye surgery at age 7, and hanging out alone at the Bay Meadows race track at age 13, both helped, but in her mid-teens, she came to rely on herself. "Why not go out and learn from life?" she said. "Learn from the biggest there is." She trained Western riding horses and worked as a veterinary technician for 18 years. Just when her vision was making it impossible to do finely detailed work, she received the call from her friend with the Percheron _ and segued into a new life. At first, she was discouraged by family and associates, who told her that a horse ambulance couldn't be built. In 1993, she began making calls. Through the university at Davis, she contacted sling maker Charlie Anderson of Potter Valley, Calif., who also demurred. "I don't want you to tell me what I can and can't do," she told him. "I want you to build me a sling." He did _ and she began calling trailer manufacturers. Thirty-one discouraging calls later, she found Fred Mann of Waterville, Kan., who told her he'd charge her for the materials if he could build the vehicle. She was floored. "I found somebody who could listen, who could conceive, who had ideas," she said. "I was bouncing off the walls." Within months, the Browns went to Kansas to get the trailer. "It was as if someone took the picture that was in my head since I was a little kid, put on a magic solution, and blew it up," she said. "I stood there and cried." The vehicle had taken $150,000 in savings and considerable overtime work on Bob Brown's part. "He's been the support," his wife said. Her first outing with the trailer, to pick up a Dublin mare alone at night, was a trial by fire. En route to Davis, the frightened animal took to plunging and kicking. They made it to Davis, but the mare, which had broken her neck, ultimately couldn't be saved. But now, the support keeps coming. Vets ask her for advice and respect her opinions. "They finally recognize I know what I'm doing," she said |
