EQUINE RESCUE

Conservation training at Cheshire’s Legacy Sanctuary

Story by Sarah Maskal Photos by Victoria Gaytan

Down a long country road, at the end of a gravel drive in Kingsbury you’ll find Cheshire’s Legacy Sanctuary and owner Robin Bisha, a professor at Texas Lutheran University. Anyone who arrives immediately is greeted by some of Bisha’s equine friends.

Chesire’s Legacy Sanctuary is a safe haven for animals that Bisha rescues where she takes the time to teach them to cope with living in a world controlled entirely by the humans around them.

Bisha’s love of animals and saving them led to her creating the sanctuary.

“I was living in Seguin and rescuing cats and then I had more cats than they actually allow by the city ordinance…. so I was looking for a place in the country where all of my cats would be safe, so that nobody would come and take away my family,” she said.

The sanctuary itself is in fact named after one of the cats that Bisha had while living in Seguin.

“The place is named after….a kitten who came to our house when he was like four weeks old,” she said. “He was all on his own, and he was the first cat that I started training. I learned how to build trust with him, even though he remained pretty feral throughout his life. He passed away just as I was getting ready to move out to the country. So, I named my place after him.”

Bisha bought a place in the country in January 2018 and began taking in other, slightly larger animals.

She had no prior experience with equine before taking in her first rescue, Sasha, a white donkey from Meadow Haven Horse Rescue. Shortly after that, she took in Martha, a pale, spotted donkey, and Sandy, a sand-colored mini horse.

Next came Lara, a brown donkey rescued from a whole herd that a man could no longer take care of. It was good timing as Bisha was interested in attaining a brown donkey. Her most recent rescue Jeremiah is a mule, and definitely the largest in her herd.

These five equine that make up Bisha’s main herd are a tight-knit group that has come to know and trust each other.

Although Bisha hopes to start offering one-at-a-time training for equine that need some rehabilitation or life skills, she is not looking to expand her own personal herd. Bisha works almost entirely on her own with her animals and wants to be able to continue giving them the attention they need, which might not be possible with a larger herd.

Bisha’s goal at Cheshire’s Legacy is to foster a feeling of safety and trust between animals and humans. She considers it a trust farm.

Many of the animals had trust issues due to neglect, among other things, when they were rescued. Bisha works with them to help build their trust in humans and prepare them to handle whatever changes they encounter in life.

“We do a lot of equine facilitated learning and they interact with people,” she said. “We have programs that deal with life skills and reading.”

So far, she has mostly worked with Texas Lutheran University students from her classes. She hopes to eventually expand the programs for anyone to sign up for a workshop or coaching experience. Doing so could help her financially, considering she funds the sanctuary entirely on her own.

Bisha recognizes that not only domesticated animals, but all animals’ lives are at the mercy of the humans around them. She uses her training to help her animals learn the skills needed to deal with that.

She also tries to work in harmony with the land around her sanctuary in order to be as considerate as possible to the surrounding wildlife. She plants wildflowers and lets them grow and spread to attract butterflies and other pollinators, and makes accommodations for other animals she has encountered on her property.

“Usually, I don’t see snakes, I know they’re here,” she said. “But this year I did see them near the water, so, I put water in other places, to train the snakes that you can get what you need over here.”

This is called conservation training and is something that Bisha would like to study and implement more over the next couple of years.

Bisha is constantly learning and expanding her knowledge of various plants and animals and methods to find better balance and harmony between herself and the environment around her.

She has taken a sort of holistic approach to animal training that everyone can learn.

Acquiring the skills to facilitate the needs of the animals — both domestic and wild — around us while still being able to accommodate our own needs has far-reaching benefits for humans and animals alike.