To Michele Oren, each horse at the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation’s Exceller Farm is special. You don’t devote your life to saving Thoroughbreds and finding them homes without having a special affection for horses. But she’s not afraid to admit that two of the 32 horses at the Poughquag, N.Y., farm where she is the manager are a little more special than most. That’s the way it is when you nurse animals back from the brink of death and watch them reborn as happy, healthy individuals.

This is one of those they-lived-happily-ever-after stories, but it starts out as a nightmarish tale for two horses who now are known as Chance and Brennan.

The two were among five horses found starving at Heidi Otto’s Parc Brook Farms by officials with the Dutchess County (NY) Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (DCSPCA). When discovered, the horses didn’t have any water and were standing ankle deep in feces and urine. Otto told DCSPCA officials that eight of her other horses had starved to death. She was charged with five counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty.

The DCSPCA confiscated the living horses from Otto and found them homes. Two, Chance and Brennan, were sent to Exceller Farm on March 16, 2003. Working on a retirement farm, Oren has seen horses come off the racetrack in various states of disrepair, but she was not prepared for the horrific sight of two animals clinging to life