MOON MOUNTAIN SANCTUARY
About Dawn
ABOUT DAWN
I have spent much of my life telling other people's stories.
I'm an actress by profession, but long before Moon Mountain had a name, animals were quietly shaping the story of my own life.
For more than a decade, I found myself taking in the wounded, the unwanted, the misunderstood, and sometimes the nearly forgotten. I learned that healing an animal rarely begins with asking something of them. It begins with giving them what they have been missing—good food, safety, space, patience, and a loving presence that doesn't disappear when things get difficult.
I've watched animals arrive afraid of a human hand and eventually choose to walk toward one. I've watched horses whose bodies and spirits seemed defeated become curious again. Those experiences changed the way I understand rescue.
I don't believe we save animals. I believe we create the conditions in which they can remember themselves.
In 2023, that calling became much bigger than me when dozens of horses needed somewhere to go. What began as an effort to save them became Moon Mountain Sanctuary & Rescue.
Today, Moon Mountain is my home, my classroom, and one of the great purposes of my life.
I still work as an actress, and storytelling remains an enormous part of who I am. But now I understand that a platform can be used for more than telling stories on a screen. It can give a voice to something that cannot walk into a room and speak for itself.
The horses have led me into places I never expected—rescue, adoption, land stewardship, legislation, the slaughter pipeline, wild-horse management, and questions about the systems we have created around animals in this country.
And through all of it, I keep coming back to something very simple: Listen before you lead.
The animals at Moon Mountain continually remind me that strength does not have to dominate, that trust cannot be forced, and that sometimes the most powerful thing we can offer another living being is the freedom and safety to become themselves again.
Moon Mountain is the physical expression of that belief.
And I'm still learning from it every day.
