Source: The Press-Enterprise
Author: JULISSA McKINNON

After 21 years of sheltering crippled and slaughter-bound horses and other barnyard animals, Renee Duncan is losing her 12-acre rescue ranch to foreclosure.

Now Duncan, a 63-year-old former emergency room nurse in remission from cancer, is scrambling to move dozens of rescued animals out of the gully in unincorporated Perris in southwest Riverside County long known as the Meadowbrook Animal Sanctuary and Haven.

Until Duncan finds a permanent home, a neighbor is offering shelter to her and her 50-some horses, a couple of emus, two turkeys and dozens of goats, pigs and dogs.

Though there are two people bidding on the ranch who say they would allow Duncan and her critters to stay as renters, Ocwen Bank, which is repossessing the ranch, has ordered Duncan to clear the property by 6 a.m. Monday.

Eviction attorneys and brokers with Ocwen Bank declined to comment on the situation.

Duncan said her nonprofit animal rescue is going under ironically because she always put her animals first.

She said she began to run into financial trouble in 2005 after being diagnosed with throat and tongue cancer. She stopped working to undergo chemotherapy and radiation.

Duncan refinanced the house three times to try to keep up with medical bills and animal care.

As money grew tight, she always paid for animal feed and veterinary care, which amounts to about $3,000 a month, even if that meant not paying the mortgage.

“I ended up with a $4,000-a-month payment at 12.5 percent interest, and we tried to keep it but we were unable,” she said.

“This has been more traumatizing than when I was diagnosed with cancer and the treatment. It’s been absolutely to me unbelievable and very, very bad for the animals.”

RANCH IN UPHEAVAL

In recent days the ranch has been bustling with volunteers leading animals into temporary places as a roving tractor moved their pens and fencing next door.

Duncan said it’s the most upheaval to ever besiege the typically sleepy ranch, a patchwork of old shade trees and dirt trails leading to various horse, pig and emu pens. Next to a two-story steel hay barn sits the main house — an old wooden bungalow built in the late 1800s.

Duncan’s hope is that she and her brood will get to stay if Ocwen Bank and one of the two bidders can settle on a price.

But if they cannot remain, Duncan is already thinking about moving 2,400 miles east to a plot her brother owns in North Carolina.

The downside to that, she said, is that she would lose a network of loyal volunteers and the area would lose a nonprofit dedicated to sheltering and relocating a rising number of abandoned animals.

In the past year, Duncan said, she’s placed about 20 dogs and several goats. But she said it’s difficult to find homes for the needier “throwaway” animals.

DUNCAN’S CASTAWAYS

Over the years, several of the world’s castaways have become Duncan’s “keepers,” as she calls them.

There’s Jack the pig, short for Jack-in-the-Box, so named because as a piglet his legs atrophied from being kept in a small box. On the ranch Jack has learned to walk again.

In a nearby pen paced Cuckoo bird, an emu Duncan took in after it was attacked by dogs.

Walking about a spacious dusty pen, Duncan recalled the stories behind 50 healthy-looking horses that had once been headed for slaughter.

Some were blind. Plenty were former racehorses. Some had been labeled too old, like Barry, a racehorse who ended up pulling carriages at Knott’s Berry Farm for years before Duncan salvaged him from a killing house.

To contact Duncan and the sanctuary, mail letters to: 18285 Collier Ave. Suite K, P.O. Box 106, Lake Elsinore, CA 92530; or call 951-505-7871

Reach Julissa McKinnon at 951-375-3730 or [email protected]