Suvi & Tilly

Please congratulate our June Volunteer of the Month…Suvi Lyrintzis!  Suvi is originally from Finland, and her delightful accent makes me smile.  She is a hard working, dedicated volunteer who handles morning feeding and chores.  She is super reliable, and always willing to pitch in to cover an extra shift.  She recently gave up most of a day to help me move several SAFE horses around.  She is pictured here with SAFE horse Tilly.  Thank you, Suvi, for being such a valuable part of our volunteer team.

I grew up on a small dairy farm in Northern Finland.  We didn’t have a horse, but luckily my uncle next door had a beautiful, huge  Finnish mare who I spent lots of time with.  She was a one of a kind horse who let kids do everything…we rode her bareback in the pastures using only a neck rope.  I rode a little as a kid, went to horse camp etc.  Later in my early adulthood I took riding lessons as a prize for finished school exams 😀  In 2000 I moved to the United States with my husband and two golden retrievers.  We were only going to stay for two years, but here we still are 12 years later. I rode a friend’s horse until I became pregnant with my first baby.  After years in the city and two kids; the farm girl inside me was waking up again and in September 2011 we bought a small farm in Snohomish.  We are in the middle of horse country, from every window you can see grazing horses.  I tried to be strong but found myself dreaming about horses again.  So I started browsing the internet and learned about neglected horses. I thought helping them was something I would love to do. I found out about S.A.F.E and started volunteering there in November 2011.  I really like my Thursday morning exercise doing barn chores and feeding and turning out horses.

Like many other volunteers, I fell love with Fire; what a sweet and handsome boy. I’m so happy for him and his new owner.  Strider, the gentle giant who went through so much and there he stands head high in his stall.  It’s really hard to pick one favorite. I like them all.

I’m really excited about the new location and can’t wait to see all the horses again.  In the future we might be able to foster  (need to put fences up first) and who knows maybe someday we could give a permanent home to a S.A.F.E horse. My daughter already has “the disease” and is taking riding lessons and I’m pretty sure my son will get it too when he gets a chance…