Living with animals has made me realize that each animal has its own story. I think about how happy I would be if I could listen and interpret their silent voices and communicate with them.

Titi, a thoroughbred, was born on March 17, 2019, on a farm somewhere in Hokkaido, Japan.
Titi was separated from her mother at one month old because she did not have the right attributes for a racehorse and she was handed over to a university hospital vetinary department. Titi was too small and cute to be used in dissection exercises, and the university professors were looking for a way to keep her alive and find a place for her to go.

I first met the orphan Titi on June 8, 2019. The doctor and students taking care of Titi at the university hospital told me that if they could not find a place for her to go in another month or so, they would have to have her put down. She lived there in a small stable with a hospitalized calf and although she had caught a skin infection from the calf and her skin was falling apart. Titi was very small, innocent, charming, and seemed to trust people.
At the time, I had only been learning about horses for about four years, had never raised a foal. Also I did not have any land on which to raise a horse.

After meeting Titi, I was restless. Some days I would think that the foal would find a place to go and live happily without me worrying about it, and other days I couldn’t sleep because I worried that she might be killed.
I talked to some people who work with horses, but they told me that raising a foal without a mother is very difficult and not recommended, that thoroughbreds are difficult to handle and should be avoided, and that saving one horse will not help when so many horses are killed for food in Japan each year. Surely whether this foal lived or died would not make any difference? I had never thought about the cause and effect of something happening each day somewhere else.

I began to wonder if saving this foal would really do anything. Saving the life of this one foal might not change the world. But I began to think that this foal’s world might change a lot. I found myself looking for a farm where Titi could live safely for the rest of her life.
I was eager to learn as much as I could about milk and feed, how to check the foal’s condition, and what to take care of in place of a mother, so that the foal would not have to go through the hardships of not having a mother and live a healthy life. I was eager to absorb it all.

On June 28, 2019, by an amazing combination of coincidence and good fortune, orphan Titi was to be moved to a slightly different ranch that promised to be her final home. Titi and I had countless experiences on this unusual ranch until March 2023. I will try to write down some of these many memories sometime. A lot has happened since I met Titi but in March 2023 Titi will have to leave the ranch that was supposed to be her permanent home.

Titi, whose pedigree was unknown, was born prematurely, and her legs were not in good shape, making her unsuitable as a riding horse. In Japan, it is common for mares to be bred until they can produce foals for breeding purposes, and then disposed of as horse meat. Still, if there is a demand she might be able to live happily as a broodmare for a period of time so let’s just give her away.
No, no, no! Titi deserves more than being a foal producing machine, only to be put down when she is no longer of any use.
Let’s find a place for Titi, who through no fault of her own was born with a defect, and despite her ordeal trusts people. Maybe she can find a place where she can enjoy the rest of her days along with other horses.

I’ll tell you more about Titi’s story sometime down the road…