Dancing Bear Animal Haven

10/02/2026

At one time, I had a fairly large herd of horses, twenty-five to be exact. Three were well broke, four were in training, four had just been rescued and were in poor health, and the rest were young ones.

One of the horses in training was Cassie, a big, fat white Medicine Hat Paint mare. She had already had sixty days of training put on her and had done beautifully in the arena and out on the road.

Then life got in the way.

My husband was having health problems, and I didn’t get out to ride Cassie. She sat for about six months.

Finally, one cold, windy day, I thought, “I need to quit putting this off. I just need to go out there and ride that horse.”

So I grabbed a halter and went outside.

Cassie was wonderful on the ground. She was easy to catch and easy to handle. I led her over beside my little ’65 Rambler, climbed up onto the hood, and from there climbed onto her back.

No saddle. Just a halter and lead rope.

Now, there were four other pregnant mares in the pasture with her, and Cassie herself was about ten and a half months pregnant, getting close to her due date. The mares were all big, heavy girls, and they were separated from the rest of the herd.

I thought, “No problem. Everybody is fat and pregnant. How much trouble can we possibly get into?”

Apparently, quite a bit.

As soon as I got on Cassie, the other mares started squealing, running around, jumping and carrying on. Cassie started dancing underneath me.

I decided this might not have been one of my better ideas.

There was a round bale about two hundred yards from the big barn, so I moved Cassie toward it. My plan was to step off onto the bale instead of jumping all the way down to the ground.

Then something happened.

I don’t remember exactly what.

I remember Cassie’s head moving and her withers coming up toward me, and I remember thinking, “I am not doing this today.”

So I let go of the lead rope and her mane.

The next thing I remember, I was walking toward the house.

I looked up and saw two houses, one sitting directly on top of the other.

I remember thinking, “Well, that’s strange. It’ll probably go away. I must have landed hard.”

Then I woke up in bed.

I was lying there thinking, “I have got to get out of bed and go ride that stupid horse.”

I got up and walked into the living room.

There was the halter lying on the floor.

I stared at it and thought, “Well, I must have been out there.”

But I couldn’t remember being out there.

I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror.

My face looked as though I had eaten a jelly doughnut and somehow missed my mouth. There were little blobs of blood and pieces of hay scattered across my face.

Then I thought, “I must have ridden that horse.”

I went back and looked at the halter again.

Sure enough, there it was.

I still couldn’t remember what had happened.

I called my husband’s work. His boss answered and said, “He just called you a little over an hour ago. What do you need?”

That didn’t make any sense to me. I thought I had talked to my husband maybe ten minutes earlier.

I told him, “I think I came off my horse.”

He went and got my husband.

My husband told me there wasn’t much he could do from work and said I should call my daughter.

So I did.

She asked, “Are you hurt?”

I said, “No, I don’t hurt. But I see double. One of everything is sitting on top of the other.”

She made one of those sounds daughters make when they know their mother has done something ridiculous, and then she hung up.

The next thing I knew, she was standing at my house.

She loaded me into the car and took me to the hospital in Torrington.

They took one look at me, ran scans, and admitted me almost immediately. I may have spent ten minutes in the emergency room, which, for Torrington, seemed like a miracle all by itself.

That night, therapy dogs came to visit the hospital. Of course, that was one of the highlights for me.

Early the next morning, my doctor came into my room.

He said, “You’re going to Swedish Medical Center in Denver.”

It turned out I had suffered a traumatic brain injury.

They rushed me to Denver by ambulance and did more testing.

My brain had been torn and bruised. There was damage in the frontal area and in the white matter, along with bruising behind my ear. The impact had caused my brain to strike the inside of my skull.

My entire right side was skinned and bruised, all the way down to my ankle.

But here is the part I still consider a miracle.

There was no bleeding on my brain.

None.

The doctors did not understand why.

Apparently, I had been unconscious for somewhere around forty-five minutes. I have absolutely no memory of it.

If I had died that day, all I would have known was that I went out to ride my horse, and the next thing I saw would have been my Lord instead of Cassie.

But God had other plans.

I spent nine days in therapy before leaving the hospital against their advice.

For the first couple of months after I came home, I saw two roads whenever I drove. I would simply concentrate on one of them, usually deciding whether I wanted to take the low road or the high road, and keep going.

I saw two of almost everything.

The eye doctor told me it would eventually go away.

That accident happened in 2015.

It is now 2026.

Most of the time my brain manages to put the two pictures together into one. But when I get tired, especially later in the afternoon, it apparently decides it has worked hard enough for the day.

Then I begin seeing double again, one image on top of the other.

And when I get very tired, I tend to walk toward the right.

So here I am, eleven years later, with a brain that was torn and bruised, eyes that sometimes disagree about where things belong, and a body that occasionally decides right is the only direction worth traveling.

But I am here.

Once again, God spared my life.

There have been many times when I could have been gone from this earth, and yet He has continued to carry me.

Sometimes God’s plans are very different from ours.

That morning, my plan was simply to ride a horse.

God’s plan was for me to live long enough to tell the story.

And here I am.

God is good.

10/01/2026

Sir Ralphie

Several years ago, a little gray tuxedo cat came here to live.

He had been found in the parking lot of a school, and a girlfriend of mine brought him to me. He was just a skinny, wiggly little fellow. She would have loved to keep him herself, but she had a dog who thought cats were Scooby Snacks, so that simply wasn’t going to work.

It was probably one of the best things that ever happened to Ralphie.

The little guy came into this place and immediately began wreaking havoc among all the other cats. He picked on them incessantly, although in Ralphie’s mind it was all great fun. He grabbed tails, pounced on everybody, bounced around the house, and acted as though every waking moment were one enormous party.

As he got a little older, he started hanging out in the bedroom. He had a little friend named Ruckus that he played with quite a bit, and I had a catio built for Ralphie so he could go out on the catio, sit in the sunshine, and get some fresh air.

Well, the catio had a little side door.

Eventually that little side door opened up a whole new world for Ralphie, and before long he had the run of the farm.

He could come into the bedroom at night and sleep with Mom, then head outside during the day and pretend he was a lion, a tiger, or whatever great beast Ralphie happened to imagine himself to be.

Within about a year and a half, he had become Head Cat.

Everybody bowed to Sir Ralphie.

Ralphie has a routine.

In the morning, he comes in and gets a few Temptations. Then he goes outside to play.

Around noon, he comes back for some love and perhaps a couple more Temptations before heading out to find a comfortable place to sleep away the afternoon.

In the evening he comes back in, gets another treat and his supper, and then settles down to sleep with Mom.

But Ralphie became much more than just another cat around the farm.

When Mom does her nails, Ralphie has learned to sit patiently and have his nails done too.

When the muscles in Mom’s throat and shoulders are sore and she cannot relax enough to sleep, Ralphie somehow seems to know. He will settle himself against the back of my neck, purring away, almost as though he is trying to massage the pain out of me.

Through some very difficult times, that little cat has been a healing force.

There is, however, one small problem with Sir Ralphie.

Ralphie firmly believes that this farm belongs to him.

And Mom most definitely belongs to him.

Not to all those ridiculous little kittens running around.

Not to the other cats coming in and out.

To Ralphie.

If he comes inside and discovers too many kittens gathered around me, he will sometimes begin circling. The kittens soon get the message and back away.

Then Ralphie turns around and, shall we say, marks his territory.

Unfortunately, sometimes his territory is Mom.

Most cats would have been permanently evicted for such an offense.

But this is Ralphie.

So Mom goes and takes another shower.

Dog-gone little cat anyway.

For all his faults, Ralphie truly is the love of my life as far as critters go. He has pulled me through some very difficult times. When a person lives alone, there is something incredibly comforting about having a little fellow who believes it is his personal responsibility to guard you, comfort you, sleep beside you, and apparently claim legal ownership of you.

So here I am, living under the watchful protection of Sir Ralphie, Head Cat of the farm.

What a gift he has been.

God is good.

09/29/2026

I have been running an animal rescue since 2015, but in truth, I have been rescuing animals since I was about five years old. A good share of my income throughout my life has gone toward animals that needed help, and through the years, many stories have come from it.

Cadbury Bean was one of those stories.

My husband was still alive then, and one evening around Easter we were driving to Scottsbluff. Along the highway, I caught sight of a cat that had apparently been hit by a car.

There is something you learn after spending a lifetime around animals. A cat that is still alive will often hunker down rather than lie completely flat or stretched out.

This cat was hunkered down.

“Turn around,” I told my husband.

He was not exactly thrilled about it, but he turned around.

When we pulled over and I climbed down the bank, I could see how badly injured the poor fellow was. He had bled across about one and a half of those rumble strips along the edge of the highway, the ones that make your tires buzz when you drive over them.

But he was alive.

I picked him up carefully by the scruff. He cried a little, and I moved him down into the ditch between the highway and the railroad tracks so he would be safer while we went into town.

As I climbed back up the bank, he cried his little heart out.

We drove into Scottsbluff, bought a carrier, and came right back.

The moment I got out of the car and he heard my voice, he began crying again.

I carefully placed him in the carrier and took him back to the studio I had at the time.

I told my husband, “If he will drink water, I think he will make it.”

And he drank.

That was enough for me.

It was late Friday night, so I made him a warm bed and settled him in. When I checked on him Saturday morning, that battered little cat had tried to crawl out of his bed to use the kitty box.

He was also terribly full of worms, which made it obvious that life had not been particularly kind to him even before the accident.

Early Monday morning, I took him to a veterinarian.

The first reaction was, “He needs to be put down.”

I said no.

“I don’t run a rescue to put animals down. I run a rescue to save them. He is drinking water. He is purring. You do what you have to do. I’ll come up with the money.”

Two hours of surgery followed.

Part of one front leg was removed. His jaw was wired. A feeding tube was placed through his neck so I could get food and water into him. One eye had been knocked completely loose in the accident and would later have to be removed.

Then they sent him home.

Because we found him around Easter, we named him Cadbury Bean. That way I would always remember when he came into our lives.

Cadbury had to be fed through his tube twice a day and given water three times a day. His shoulder and little remaining stump were wrapped while they healed.

But that cat had determination.

He could get himself up, use the kitty box, and make his way back to bed.

And he purred.

Goodness, did that cat purr.

He was a nonstop purr box.

After he had healed enough, I took him to our regular veterinarian. That was when I learned that his jaw had not healed correctly and that the injured leg probably should have been removed completely rather than leaving the small stump.

But, in a funny way, that little stump became part of Cadbury’s character.

Our regular veterinarian also removed the damaged eye.

By the time everything was finished, I had spent about $3,800 saving one battered, one-eyed, three-legged cat from the side of a Wyoming highway.

And I would do it again.

Cadbury Bean came to live at my studio.

He lived another seven years.

Remember, he was already an older cat when I found him. Eventually, the damage to his jaw and other complications caught up with him, and cancer finally took him.

But until his last day, Cadbury Bean seemed thankful simply to have a life.

He showed it every day.

Some people may look at an injured animal lying beside a highway and see something hopeless.

I see a life.

And isn’t that what rescue is really about?

It is caring for those who cannot care for themselves. It is stopping when it would be easier to keep driving. It is saying, “Give him a chance,” when someone else says there is no point.

I am so thankful that God has given me the opportunity to do that for so many years.

And I am especially thankful that, one Easter long ago, He put a battered little cat beside the highway where I happened to see him.

His name was Cadbury Bean.

And for seven more years, he got to live.

God is so good.

09/10/2026

We were not created to live without work or purpose. When we have nothing meaningful to do, life can become terribly empty and depressing.

One of the great blessings of working with animals is that so much of the work takes place outside, surrounded by nature and the beauty God creates. Every season brings something new to behold: the changing skies, the flowers, the grass, the trees, and, of course, the animals themselves.

Work can make your back sore, your head hurt, and your stomach hungry. But at the end of the day, there is something wonderful about knowing you accomplished something worthwhile. You sleep harder, deeper, and often with a smile.

And let’s not forget, usually with a furry friend curled up somewhere close by.

There is purpose in caring, purpose in working, and purpose in being needed.

God is good.

08/13/2026

Today is cleaning day change the kitty boxes, clean the pens change the water and it’s very nice out. No overbearing heat. It’ll be a good day. There is supposed to be rain this afternoon right now. Everybody’s sleeping there enjoying the cool these little babies take constant care, feed and upkeep Your help. Makes a difference.!

08/13/2026

We got a break from the heat for a day!!

07/29/2026

07/29/2026

Last night, we finally got rain.

It has been so hot here. Some days have reached 104 or 105 degrees, and the “cooler” days have only been in the upper 90s. Funny how saying “only the high 90s” sounds almost normal after a summer like this.

This morning, though, everything felt different.

The air was cool, the ground was damp, and everywhere I looked there were kittens. Kittens bouncing through the yard, kittens chasing little toys, kittens wrestling with each other, and kittens discovering the world one tiny adventure at a time. It was one of those mornings that makes you stop and smile.

Later today the temperatures will climb back into the 90s, but thanks to the rain, they’ll have cool, damp ground beneath the trees where they can stretch out, nap, and escape the heat.

Sometimes the simplest blessings are the sweetest. A little rain. A cool morning. Happy kittens. A heart full of gratitude.

And tonight, the rodeo starts again.

God is good. 🧡

07/26/2026

New kids

07/16/2026

Little Pigweed is doing so much better now. He is eating well, drinking plenty of water, and doing all his sweet little kitten things again. We don’t go outside anymore. We stay safely indoors, where it is cool and the hot sun cannot shine down so fiercely on us. I am very thankful to see my little Pigweed feeling like himself again. 🐾💜