Published: March 27, 2008 02:10 pm            

Priced to move: Horse rescue raising money from home sale

Originally published in the March 21, 2008, print edition.

GOOD THUNDER — Providing a home for horses is nothing new to Misfit Acres, a southern Minnesota horse rescue-sanctuary. But providing a home for people? Now that’s a horse of a different color.

Thanks to a gift from generous neighbors, the non-profit Misfit Acres is set to receive all proceeds from the sale of a rural Blue Earth County residence. Rescue owners Bruce and Jody Thisted certainly aren’t being greedy about it, saying they’d be happy if they got as little at $5,000 for the one-and-a-half story, three-bedroom, one-bath house (although of course they’d prefer much more).

The catch? You buy it, you move it. On your dime. And it needs to be gone by May 1.

Jody said she and Bruce briefly thought about taking the home for themselves, but they simply don’t have room for it among the pastures that nine horses currently call home. And so, it’s going up for sale. They’ve already received some interest, but admit the “you move it” part of the deal is a breaker for some.

“The moving is a problem,” Jody said. “When we considered taking it, I asked a guy for a rough guess, and he said, ‘Without measuring it to you a concrete idea, I’d tell you probably more than $12,000.’ So that’s the only drawback.”

The home belongs to friends of the Thisteds, Brian and Linette Irvine, who live just a couple of miles down the road from Misfit Acres. The Irvines built a large log cabin home close by, and are looking to have their old place gone in time to do landscaping this summer.

“It’s such a generous offer from them. It’s just incredible,” Jody said. “The house would be perfect if somebody had a big lake lot or something and wanted a cabin out there.”

Life with the horses

Misfit Acres is currently home to nine horses. Other than Augie, a horse they raised before officially becoming a sanctuary, they’re all rescues: My Sweet April, Peanut, BJ, Magic, Dixie, Abbey, Montana and Lucky, Jody’s first horse, bought in 1994.

For years, the Thisteds figured it cost about $1,500 per horse per year for the basic food and medical needs. Lately, however, with rising fuel prices sending feed costs skyward, Jody said the figure is getting closer to $2,300 to $2,500.

In recent months Misfit Acres has received grants from Alltel Wireless ($1,500) and the Carl and Verna Schmidt Foundation in Rochester ($6,000). More mundane sources of income for the horse rescue include the recycling of donated printer cartridges, cell phones, aluminum cans and pop bottles.

They’ve dealt with a variety of medical issues in their horses over the years, from severe malnutrition to awful bouts with founder, which causes severe pain in a horse’s feet. “Founder is terrible,” Jody said. “Sometimes you can get ’em where they’re comfortable and sometimes you can’t.”

Twelve-year-old Magic is blind in one eye, and can’t see too well out of the other one, for that matter. “He gets a few dings on his nose from the round bale feeder sometimes, but I’ve never seen him crash into the doorway of the shelter or the tree or anything,” she said. “He just goes to eat sometimes and gets in a hurry.”

The horses come and go, sometimes to other homes, but other times Misfit Acres is simply their last stop, a comfortable end to a hard life. “It’s very hard to lose one. It’s very, very hard,” Jody said. “They live here, and you get so attached to them. It’s always a ball getting to know them.”

        

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