A Cariboo-area man battling terminal cancer and struggling to keep his 12 horses has seen friends rally to support him.
Dan Franklin said the cancer diagnosis in October 2020 has reconnected him with people he has not been in touch with for more than 30 years, including someone he was in elementary school with.
“It’s brought them to my doorstep asking how they can help,” Franklin said from his home at the Misty Meadow Ranch on Horsefly Road.
Franklin, 66, who has two grown sons in Williams Lake and a 12-year-old daughter, worked in the mining industry locally for more than 30 years and upon his semi-retirement planned on being a horse therapist, something he’s done for decades in the Cariboo and as far away as England, Switzerland and South Africa where he said he worked with special needs children.
It’s always been easy for him to sort out troubled horses, he said, noting horses have a language all of their own.
Adopted when he was five weeks old by a couple in Maple Ridge who raised him, Franklin said he was introduced to horses while doing a paper route.
One of his customers had Pine Crest Farms and when the man saw Franklin looking at his horses through the fence, he invited him to take a closer look and then hired him to clean the stables on Saturdays.
“He was instrumental in my involvement with horses,” Franklin recalled.
Friends have started a GoFundme for Franklin to help raise enough to pay for hay until later in the spring when he hopes to sell some of the horses.
Franklin said the horses have been a great comfort to him since his diagnosis.
“I have my horses that are guiding me and my own intuition.”
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