FROM AT-RISK TO RESCUED

From a very early age, Anna Mauwong was rescuing horses.

“I was eight years old when I started working with Annie,” said Anna. “She wouldn’t let me near her — she would rear up as soon as I got close.”

Now a senior at St. Michaels Middle High, Anna has worked with horses, sheep, chickens, geese, ducks and even bees through her family’s nonprofit, Ark Farms, which rehabilitates animals and works with at-risk youths.

Annie was Anna’s first rescue horse, one that came to her from an abused background.

“Most of the horses we rehab take 1-2 months, but Annie took 8 years,” Anna explained.

Anna said that how she works with the horses, using treats — sometimes too many, she laughs — coming back to them every day, shows the horses that they are always there for them and that they can trust her.

“I try to work with the trauma that they have experienced and let them slowly recognize that I am someone that they can trust.”

She uses a steady, calming voice and never looks at their heads.

“Predators look at their prey’s heads, so I will look anywhere but,” said Anna.

Working with Annie, Anna learned to love herself again after some traumatic events in her early childhood, from fleeing New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina at a very young age, to dealing with her mother’s illness in grade school and sexual assaults in middle school.

Around that time, her horse became sick with EPM, a debilitating disease caused by a protozoan parasite from opossum, by way of cats or other barn regulars. Anna, seeing that her horse needed her more than ever, devoted more time to her and began the long healing process. Anna would feed her out of her hands, or with a mat under the bin, so that she would get all the nutrition