Just when she thought she was out, they pulled her back in.

Five years ago, Karen Runyon remarried and moved to the Verde Valley, intent on taking a break from tending to horses, something she had done nearly all her life.

The break didn’t last long.

“I went through horse withdrawal,” she said.

After a couple of months, she was meeting horse people and getting her fix by grooming local horses.

“It’s a passion. You’re born with it. It’s nothing that’s learned,” she said.

A short time later, she took on two aging horses from a local farm to prevent them from starving.

“I wasn’t looking for them. They just sort of fell in my lap,” she said. “I couldn’t turn my back and walk away.”

The woman with a heart for animals — she said she has three rescue dogs and three rescue cats at home — now boards Stretch and Diamond, along with a third horse, Mak, on a friend’s property in Bridgeport.

For the full story, see the Wednesday, April 4, issue of The Camp Verde Journal and the Cottonwood Journal Extra.