Audrey L.D. Petschek confesses she”™s a workaholic. “I put in 18 to 20 hours on regular days,” she said. “I sleep on average six hours a night.” That leaves a lot of time to sell real estate (she”™s a broker in New Canaan), raise horses (she has a horse farm in Newtown), and pursue her passion of rescuing injured wild animals ”“ sometimes while raising horses or trying to sell real estate.
This past summer, for example, she was driving a real estate client around Pear Tree Point in Darien when they came upon a deer that had tried to jump an 8-foot iron fence. The deer had hooked its thigh on one of the spikes and, Petschek said, “was screaming for help, but the fence was too high for me to reach her.”
She dodged the injured animal”™s hooves ”“ the horrified client stayed a safe distance across the street ”“ until two landscapers stopped their truck and “the three of us were able to lift the deer off the spike and free her.” The deer had apparently not broken any bones or punctured any arteries, she said, “so she had a chance of surviving her injury, and she trotted off.”
The deer is not the first animal in crisis that Petschek has come across and tried to help. She has rescued numerous injured or orphaned animals, nursing them back to health to release back into the wild when possible, bringing others to Wildlife in Crisis in Weston or to veterinarians specializing in treating wildlife, or calling local police to euthanize injured animals beyond help.
“You”™ll find them every day, if you look,” she said of injured wildlife. “Most people are totally oblivious to what”™s going on. I drive down the road scanning for animals. I even pulled a dead moose off the road with the help of four other motorists in Vermont,” she said of the victim of a drunk driver.
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Dropped dinner forks
Her love of wild things grew out of an early love of animals that are not so wild ”“ horses. When she was 8 years old, her parents took her on vacation to a Colorado horse ranch where she and her mother took riding lessons. When they returned home to New Canaan, “I continued to pursue riding,” she said. “I got my first horse when I was 12 and had her until we were both 28.” A year after she got that first horse, she started teaching riding, and by the time she was 19, “I had 60 students,” she said. “I was teaching riding full-time when most kids were playing around in high school.”
For a time, she considered becoming “a professional horseman and a full-time teacher,” but her college degree had nothing to do with horses. Instead, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in writing from Fairfield University “because I loved to write,” she said. “That was my passion. I would write nine-page letters to my grandmother” and, later, began writing how-to articles on horse training for equestrian publications.
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Those articles grew out of her growing expertise as a rider and trainer of hunter horses ”“ a breed of jumping horses that are judged on their ability “to hold their form in the air and make it look like a pleasure,” she said. “I”™m a bit of a perfectionist, and the hunters appeal to my sense of trying to do something gracefully and perfectly.” During that career ”“ which ended abruptly in 1991 when she had back surgery ”“ “I probably won more than 1,000 horse-show ribbons in two-dozen states,” including national End of the Year Awards from the National Horse Show Association. “I was literally on the road all the time for horse shows,” she said.
After the back surgery prevented continued riding and jumping, she began breeding horses on her 22-acre Newtown farm. “Right now I own eight horses ”“ four geldings and four mares,” she said. “I don”™t talk a lot about breeding to nonhorse people. They start saying ”˜What?”™ and dropping their dinner forks when you start talking about shipping semen across country.”
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Top producer
Petschek also found she had time on her hands after she stopped the horse show circuit, and decided to exercise another of her passions ”“ real estate. “I”™ve always had a huge passion for real estate,” she said. “When I was 17, I subscribed to one of those big, glossy, fancy-home magazines and would read it cover to cover.” And selling real estate appealed to her because “it wasn”™t a 9-to-5 job at the office with someone leaning over my shoulder,” she said. “Real estate is pretty much what you put into it.”
What she put into it once she joined a New Canaan Coldwell Banker agency was everything she had, becoming a consistent ”˜top producer”™ for the agency and last year being named as one of the franchise”™s top 2 percent producers worldwide. “Real estate is my career seven days a week,” she said, selling mostly in lower Fairfield County and nearby Westchester County in New York. “I go wherever my clients want me to go.”
But squeezed into all that ”“ from a riding teacher to ribboned trainer of jumping horses to horse breeder to real estate agent ”“ is the constant theme of rescuing wild animals. “I”™ve pretty much always picked up little birds and rescued bunnies from the dogs,” she said. “Two years ago I raised a baby groundhog myself, bottled fed her for about two weeks, and let her go on my property.” She nursed a bluejay chick that wasn”™t ready to fly, feeding it until it grew its feathers and began flying round her house. “Last year I was all dressed up for a wedding when I came across a possum hit by a car. I scooped it up in a bucket and brought it to Wildlife in Crisis.”
She”™s even rescued snapping turtles ”“ Don”™t try this at home, folks ”“ and brought them to vets who glued their cracked shells together. “I even like snakes, but I can”™t feed them because they eat my little fuzzy friends.”
And she”™s fed or befriended a host of critters from feral cats to foxes that visit her barn. “I had one feral cat that I started feeding every night,” she said. “I would put the food at my feet, and it took a year to be able to pet her.” Another feral cat “moved into my house,” at her request, of course, where it has taken up residence with four other cats.
“I”™m exceedingly patient,” Petschek said of her interaction with wild things. She once took more than 45 minutes to encourage a young skunk to leave her barn. “They”™ll never spray unless you threaten them,” she said. “If I had tried to pick it up, it would have sprayed.”
“Animals make me laugh,” Petschek said. “They bring a lot of joy to my life. I find some people scarier than a lot of animals.”
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