Nov. 5, 2009 - What is now part of a dream started out as a nightmare when Nancy Jensen-Case's neighbor left the area and left three horses in a pasture without food or water. People in the area assumed that the man's mother was feeding the horses, but that was not the case.
Jensen-Case, a chaplain in Austin, started throwing bales of hay across the fence for the horses to eat. She tried to get the proper authorities involved in the case but to no avail. Finally, the owner came and took the horses away. She's not sure what became of them.
From that experience came Dreamtime Sanctuary, one of the few animal sanctuaries dedicated to large farm animals, particularly horses, sheep and goats.
"That jump-started me on taking animals in," she said.
Today, her ranch in Bastrop County is the home of Dreamtime Sanctuary and 89 assorted creatures that have fallen on hard times.
"Since then, I have been gifted with too much of everything."
That would include sheep, which Jensen-Case said is one of the most likely farm animals to be abandoned or neglected, which is why she has about 20 sheep on her 10-acre place. The population received an unexpected jump start when two of the rescued lambs turned out to be already bred when they arrived at Dreamtime.
"That's way more sheep than we want or need on this patch of land," she said. "You can't find a home for a sheep either, and about half of them need shearing, which is a big job. It's harder to find shearers than it used to be."
The horses need some of that pasture, including three blind ones. Two sighted horses, both older than 30 years, take care of the blind horses, she said. Two of the blind horses were shipped to Dreamtime in the wake of a horrific animal cruelty case in Iowa. Private owners brought Jensen-Case the third blind horse.
"The blind horses have done real well here," she said. "The people who brought us the (blind) paint pony were in tears when they dropped it off. They promised they would be back to visit and help take care of it, and then they moved out of the area. It's a lesson learned."
Jensen-Case takes the Dreamtime name from the Australian aboriginals, whose use of the term is extensive, but generally refers to the spiritual cycle of life as opposed to the daily cycle. For Jensen-Case, it celebrates the idea of a peaceful co-existence among species.
"We have some strange cross-species friendships in this place," she said. That includes a chicken that showed up out of nowhere and began giving Jensen-Case an egg a day in exchange for room and board.
The animal menagerie currently includes a few dogs, but Jensen-Case insists that is a temporary situation because she wants to keep her focus on the larger animals. Most of the animals come with a story, often of the heartbreaking variety.
"This is one of a handful of large animal rescues in the whole state," she said. "Rescuing horses seemed like a natural thing to do, especially when my youngest daughter was here. She's about three-quarters horse anyway, one of those who was practically born sitting on a horse.
"We also have three donkeys and a goat. The goat came here from a petting zoo that didn't allow the goats to play head-butting games. They said it was unacceptable behavior, which I don't understand exactly because that is what goats do."
For a short time, Jensen-Case funded the Dreamtime operation out of her own pocket, but that soon became impossible. She relies now mostly on donations. Getting a webpage, and even a Facebook page, has helped get the word out about Dreamtime, even more than she dreamed herself.
"Sometimes the donations just come flooding in, and that has been the case recently," she said. "That's a good thing, too because our feeding costs really increased with the drought. I'm being told now that I (should) add Twitter, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go that far with it just yet."
In the meantime, Jensen-Case would like to have more acreage for her animals and also have cabins where visitors can stay and interact with the Dreamtime animals.
"I envision it as a healing place," she said. "Patients often feel better when they're around animals and can have some interaction with them. We've had cancer patients come out here until they got too sick, and they found it beneficial. I would like to make that available for more people."
