Rescuing Horses 'Beyond A Passion' For Pleasanton Woman

PLEASANTON, CA – Gretchen Kyle will be the first to admit that she can be beyond pushy about her passion for rescuing horses. It's a cause that isn’t as popular as it is with other animals, but is one that remains close to the retired Stanford Hospital healthcare professional's heart for very sentimental reasons.

Big Bay Ray, a former track horse that Kyle’s daughter, Jenna, rescued from Indian Hills Ranch in Milpitas, has been gone for four years now. But even before Ray Ray’s death, Kyle realized that the need to raise awareness for rescuing horses like him was great enough that she not only wanted to lend her time, energy and finances to the effort, but she wanted to make sure that her family’s beloved horse’s name lived on long after his death.

For the past four years, BigBayRay.com, the not-for-profit Kyle started has turned recycled grain bags into colorful reusable bags and other gifts. All of the profits in turn goes to local organizations that rescue horses, allowing Kyle’s passion to find a mission that was started with one special horse.

Kyle said the first time her daughter laid eyes on Ray Ray, it was love at first sight. At the time, Ray Ray was already losing weight after his former owner had to give him up for financial reasons. But with no one longer to care for him, Kyle and her daughter started feeding him grain, bought him a blanket and looked after him before making the decision to rescue him.

The only problem was that Jenna was heading to Cornell University Law School at the time, which meant that the care of a horse that hadn’t been cared before Jenna rescued him became Kyle’s responsibility.

“He kind of became a family horse,” Kyle told Patch Thursday night.

After Ray Ray’s death, Kyle found it impossible to return to the Milpitas ranch. She didn’t want to smell a horse, didn’t want to be around horses, but she knew that she had to give all of Ray Ray’s belongings to someone who would care for it. A woman Kyle had met after Ray Ray became ill agreed to take his belongings and on each piece, wrote, “In Memory of Ray.”

The words stuck with Kyle, who wondered if the mission was one her family was supposed to take on. She decided that she would find organizations that rescued horses and find a way to support them financially. What started with a $1,700 donation to a Pleasanton organization called Horses Healing Hearts has turned into a yearly donation of proceeds from the sale of the gifts that have been created from the recycled grain bags.

While Kyle oversees the collection of the grain bags, volunteers wash and sew the bags into shopping bags, wine bottle carriers, baby bibs and other items that Kyle’s organization sells to benefit various rescue organizations.

In addition to rescue organizations and therapeutic riding groups like Reins in Motion in Livermore that receive an average of $2,000, Kyle’s organization also donated $2,500 to the UC Davis Emergency Response Team, which helped battle the wildfires in Santa Rosa.

Before choosing what organization she will partner with each year, Kyle spends time on the ground with the rescue horses and learns what each group is doing to help these animals in need. She sees as horses come in that are down 250 pounds from their previous weight or that need care and she understands what kind of work lies ahead in helping return the horses to health.

Kyle said that once people find out what is driving the mission of her not-for-profit, they buy a bag or other gifts.

“It’s all about the story and the cause,” she said. “…People think we have horses and I tell them, ‘No, the people that actually take care of these horses, feed them, clean their stalls and give them their medication and nurse them back to health, they’re the ones you should be impressed with'. I just go around the area begging for money so that they can do that.”

Kyle says she and her husband invested about $10,000 of their own money to start the not-for-profit. Now, much of her time comes in getting others to help spread the word about the organization’s attempts to raise awareness for horse rescue. While dog and cat rescues are more common, the stories of horses that go uncared for and need attention are just as heart-breaking, Kyle said.

The mission remains personal for Kyle — even all these years after Ray Ray died — but is one that she remains dedicated as she wants to keep helping organizations that want to care for horses that constantly need to be looked after being they too are rescued. She does it one recycled grain bag at a time.

“I’m 62 years and dogs and cats are being rescued and it’s the chic thing to do and I get it and I absolutely love it,” Kyle said. “But horses need rescuing and so we’ve got a harder time and so I have to try.

She added: “I think that’s why I’m borderline aggressive (about the mission). It’s way beyond a passion.”